Does eye closure improve memory recall of an eyewitness? Many researchers that have conducted multiple studies on this topic have asked this question. With eye closure, one can block out external factors that are distracting when trying to produce a mental image, increasing their memory of an event that was witnessed. According to, Reisberg (2013) during visual perception and visual imagery, the same areas of brain tissue are equally active. Therefore, when witnessing a live event then being tested on it, the accuracy of the answers can decline because of the brain recreating the event as a visual image and having disturbances. By closing your eyes, you are lessening the chance of mixing up thoughts thus causing error in memory (Vredeveldt & Penrod, 2013). The concept of eye-closure is related to meditating which causes relaxation of the mind. Previous research showed that when one relaxes their mind, they could concentrate more on recalling an event because they are blocking out all other visual and auditory interruptions (Wagstaff et al. 2010). Results from other studies demonstrated strong evidence that supported the idea of eye closure effecting memory when recalling an event that was witnessed.
According to Wagstaff et al. (2010) after conducting three experiments it was noted that, combining eye closure with focused meditation can possibly be more helpful then using just one in certain situations. Similarly, although it is not as popular or widely used as it once was, hypnosis can still be used as a way to help people remember things. This is because they both produce very alike results. With meditation participants could put themselves in a very relaxed state, assisting with blocking out unnecessary and disrupting...
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.... (2012). Environmental visual
distraction during retrieval affects the quality, not the quantity, of eyewitness recall. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26(2), 296-300.
Reisberg, D. (2013). Cognition: exploring the science of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton.
Vredeveldt, A., Hitch, G. J., & Baddeley, A. D. (2011). Eye closure helps memory by
reducing cognitive load and enhancing visualization. Memory & Cognition, 39(7), 1253-1263.
Vredeveldt, A., & Penrod, S. D. (2013). Eye-closure improves memory for a witnessed
event under naturalistic conditions. Psychology, Crime & Law, 19(10), 893-905.
Wagstaff, G. F., Wheatcroft, J. M., Burt, C. L., Pilkington, H. J., Wilkinson,
K., & Hoyle, J. D. (2011). Enhancing witness memory with focused meditation and eye-closure: Assessing the effects of misinformation. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 26(2), 152-161.
Amici curiae is a social psychologist and legal scholar who studies the effects of the Recovered Memory Syndrome on individuals’ behaviors and judicial practices. Amici has conducted research and published several peer-reviewed articles explaining the role of hypnosis in uncovering repressed memories and related traumas that come along with it. This brief intends to provide the Court with relevant and current literature explaining the recovered memory phenomenon and its relationship with psychotherapeutic techniques where recovery of memories often occurs. Research presented by amici demonstrates that cases of sexual abuse, real or imagined, must be given careful consideration as victims undergo significant emotional
Elizabeth Loftus, is a psychologist, mainly concerned with how subsequent information can affect an eyewitness’s testimony. Loftus has focused on misleading information in both the difference in wording of questions and how these questions can influence eyewitness testimony. This research is important because frequently, eyewitness testimony is a crucial element in criminal proceedings. Throughout Loftus’s career she has found a witness’s memory is highly flexible and subject to being influenced. The classic study by Loftus and Palmer (1974), illustrates that eyewitness testimony can be influenced by leading questions and ultimately proved unreliable.
Wagner, U., Hallschmid, M., Rasch, B.H., & Born, J. (2006). Brief sleep after learning keeps emotional memories alive for years. Biological Psychiatry, 60, 788–790.
Wright, D. B., & Skagerberg, E. M. (2007). Postidentification feedback affects real eyewitnesses. Association for Psychological Science, 18(2), 172-178.
In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.
Schacter, D. L., & Slotnik, S. D. (2004). The cognitive neuroscience of memory distortion. Neuron, 44, 149-160.
Although testimony by witnesses is an invaluable tool in assisting judges and juries’ efforts to convict violent criminals, however, there are major issues with witness memory and recall of events. For this reason, officers of the court use the professional psychological research to deal with the likelihood of significant errors in eyewitness testimony. The fact is, human memory begins to fade within the first hour. In addition, memory continues to decrease for the next nine hours and beyond. Furthermore, recall of a crime can be affected by other factors. As a consequence of major mistakes in observer evidence many innocent victims spend years in prison before they are vindicated and
The first stage of memory is the sensory memory. Sensory memory holds sights, sounds, smells, textures, and other sensory impressions for only a few seconds, and it operates on an unconscious level. (Zimbardo, P., & Johnson, R. (2013). Memory. In Psychology: Core Concepts With Dsm-5 Update (pp. 177-179). Pearson College Div.)This stage of memory is the shortest element of memory. Sensory memory has the ability to retain impressions of different sensory information. Sensory memory is the ultra-short term memory and it retains brief impressions of the sensory stimuli after the stimulus has ended. It holds the shortest impression of sensory information and even when the sensory system does not send information the sensory memory still holds the shortest impression. There are many different issues and characteristics of the sensory memory; it has a high capacity to form memory registration of visual data, and the information that’s stored is un-interpreted, and the it the visual information fades away after less than a second. In order to use the information in your sensory memory, you must encode the information quickly. The sensory memory is the hardest memory to grasp and most of what we sense is forgotten. Sensory memory allows the eye to have a larger field of vision by remembering images that your eye has already focused on. The sensory memory, in general, allows us to maintain incoming sensory information long enough for us to screen it and determine if it is important. (Zimbardo, P., & Johnson, R. (2013). Memory. In Psychology: Core Concepts With Dsm-5 Update (pp. 177-179). Pearson College Div.)
To our knowledge, eyewitness memory could be simply defined as a person’s episodic memory that he or she has been a witness of a certain criminal event. However, psychologists have discovered that the confidence of memory recall of eyewitness, would increase significantly by asking them the simple question, (e.g., Do you see the perpetrator below the following pictures?), even though the feedback
Koriat, A., Goldsmith, M., Schneider, W., & Nakash-Dura, M. (2001). The Credibility of Children’s Testimony: Can Children Control the Accuracy of Their Memory Reports?. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 79, 405-437.
Similar studies were done to a different set of college students and they tended to have the same results. After giving as much detail about each memory, the students were interviewed about what they may have written done about what they had remembered. During the last part of the experiment, each of the students were debriefed and asked to guess which memory they believed was false.
There have been two main studies into the effects of anxiety on eye-witness testimony (EWT), each producing conflicting results. The first was a study by Johnson and Scott (1976), the second by Yuille and Cutshall (1986).
We can imply this finding of false memory in many ways in our lives. We all should note that our memory cannot be trusted 100% and we should not solely rely on our memory when it comes to making critical decisions. Just like the murder trial example used in earlier, when it comes to eye witnessing, the judge should take possible false memory into account when making the final decisions and try to obtain objective evidence along with the memory of the witness.
...tudying psychology at the University of Canberra using normal distractor and special distractor words when participants are presented with lists of words. The methods of this experiment are similar to the methods of Roediger and McDermotts’s study (1995) study. It is predicted that given how robust previous studies have found false memories to be (Wright et.al. 2005) it is likely these students will be just as susceptible to the effects of false memories and will be likely to report seeing special distractor words as often as they report seeing the original list of words.
Rasch, Björn, and Jan Born. "About Sleep 's Role in Memory." Physiological Reviews. American Physiological Society, n.d. Web. 06 May 2016.