In class this week we saw cases where our memory fails when recalling information in the past and even seeing changes in real time in front of our eyes. Misinformation is when someone gives information that is incorrect without the intent of giving the incorrect information. This is more likely to happen in situations where the new information would fit someone’s schema of the situation. In a crime example, we can say that a robber has a knife in his hand and pointed it at someone, someone in the situation may have seen a gun instead of the knife and give that as a description. It is the same when someone misreads a word or letter as another in a license plate. It is not on purpose but it is because our brains use shortcuts to link events together to save time. In class we discussed why the new false memory might take hold as if it was the true memory. We said that since the new misinformation was more recent, it would be more easily remembered and projected into the memory. This blocking theory can be used to explain why when someone says they saw a gun at a crime scene to the other witnesses, the other witnesses may be more likely to say that there was a gun and not a knife
In Gabbert’s social misinformation experiment, researchers have found that misinformation received from social sources are more likely to be imprinted into a subjects memory and be recalled later. It can even have an effect on memories not even discussed. This can be detrimental to not only everyday scenarios but in a police investigation it can be harmful to the investigation. In an investigation if witnesses discuss what occurred and one gives a false memory then the police may arrest the wrong suspect. This is also important if the investigation...
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...at information to interview other witnesses, the witness may go along with the statement. We did learn that this can also occur when witnesses interact and talk with each other. The good news is that law enforcement officials realize that this is a problem and have come up with some solutions like seeing how alike stories are and trying to pick out information that may be incorrect. Other ways that law enforcement officials can try to minimize misinformation is to try to interview witnesses separately. Also, the way the officials phrase the question can have an effect, asking for example: “Did you see a vehicle? If so what color or make and model was it?” and not asking: “Did you see a dark blue Ford Focus?” By asking more open questions I feel that witnesses would rely on only their observations and not those that the official or other witnesses said they saw.
In the magic of the mind author Dr. Elizabeth loftus explains how a witness’s perception of an accident or crime is not always correct because people's memories are often imperfect. “Are we aware of our minds distortions of our past experiences? In most cases, the answer is no.” our minds can change the way we remember what we have seen or heard without realizing it uncertain witnesses “often identify the person who best matches recollection
In Laurence Armand French Ph.D. and Thomas J. Young Ph.D.’s article The False Memory Syndrome: Clinical/Legal Issues for the Prosecution talks about memory recall being an unreliable form of evidence in the Criminal Justice System. French and Young state that hypnosis and lie detector tests are a misconception because “the cognitive interpretations of the emotional/autonomic aspects of the central nervous (CNS) and peripheral nervous systems are not true indicators of reality,” (p. 38).
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.
Wells, G. L., & Bradfield, A. L. (1998). “Good, you identified the suspect”: Feedback to eyewitness distorts their reports of the eyewitness experience. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(3), 360-376.
One cannot always accurately reproduce information due to the stages of memory processing that occur after witnessing an event. With each stage, the accuracy of the memory decreases. According to Aronson, Wilson, and Akert (2013), the first stage is acquisition. Acquisition is the process by which people notice only certain information in a particular setting because they cannot perceive everything around them. Also, witnessing a crime often occurs quickly, unexpectedly, under poor viewing conditions, or while focus is on another object, such as a gun. These circumstances significantly decrease the amount of accurate information that the observer will acquire, and the likelihood for accurate reproduction of the event in testimony is lessened (Aronson et al., 2013). According to Fradella (2006), acquisition is dependent upon the same individualized factors that are present in perception and expectations. Expectations impact what information an observer seeks out or avoids, ultimately impacting their overall memory (Fradella, 2006).
Minor consequences, might for instance, be confusing where one has placed something, like car keys. Such confusion can result in a simple inconvenience such as, the wasting of time. Although more serious consequence might for instance occur when one’s memory tricks the individual into giving false eyewitness accounts that might be costly to him, or other third parties. As such, it is important to critically analyze the dynamics of false memory formation and highlight methods that could be used to identi...
Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory (1932) suggests that we tend to see and in particular interpret and recall what we see according to what we expect and assume to be normal in a given situation, which certainly questions the reliability of eye witness testimony.
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
Research has shown that even though information may be committed to memory, what is retrieved can be altered during the encoding process. It has been said that, “the recollection of memory can be manipulated and or large aspects of the event can be confabulated.” (Cain,1997). Moreover, the recollection of past experiences can negatively affect future decisions, opinions, and more significant outcomes such as an eyewitness. This type of impact is due to something called, “false memories.” False memories can be defined as “an recollection of an event that never actually occurred.” False memories are said to be normal occurrences and have little impact on lives. However, Loftus and Palmer argue something different. In 1974, Loftus and Palmer conducted an experiment to test out the theory behind “false memories.” Their aim was to show that language used in eyewitness testimony can alter memory. People in this experiment were asked to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different ways of questioning. Loftus and Palmer asked questions in regards to vehicle speed because typically that is something that most people are bad at estimating. Therefore these people would be more vulnerable and open to suggestions. The procedure of this experiment involved participants watching a video of cars. Participants were asked what they had seen in regards to how that car came in contact with the other car. Loftus and Palmer used words like “crashed, collided, hit, and smashed.” Their findings concluded that the estimated speed was affected by the verb used to describe the cars’ contact with one another. It seem as if participants saw that the verbs as clues of the speed the cars were going. Loftus and Palmer also came to the conclusion that there could only be two reasons for their findings. Those reasons were Response- bias factors or the fact that the memory representation is alter.
However, I did not know that people’s memories could change because of how someone was interrogated. I also did not know that this was called the misinformation effect. I do know that judicial cases use eyewitness testimonies because it can be very effective if accurate. I also did know that people have been mistakenly convicted of a crime because of inaccurate or insufficient evidence, like eyewitness testimonies or fraudulent DNA
Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie.
Memory is one of the most critical parts of cognition. It is important because it is involved in almost every aspect of cognition including problem solving, decision making, attention, and perception. Because of this importance, people rely on one’s memory to make important decisions. The value of one’s memory in this society is so high that it is used as evidence to either save one’s life or kill one’s life during murder trials. But as many of the cognitive psychologists know, human’s memory can cause many errors. One of these errors is false memory which is either remembering events that never happened or remembering events differently from the actual event. This finding of false memory raised big interests among psychologists and general public and many researches were done in order to find more about the false memory. The constructive approach to memory, which states that memory is constructed by person based on what really happened in addition to person’s other knowledge, experiences, and expectations, supports the idea of false memory. Just like what constructive approach to memory states, the false memory can be created by person’s knowledge, common biases, and suggestions. The present study was done in order to demonstrate one methodology that biases people to create and recall false memories. The present study is based on Deese’s experiment in 1959 and also on Roediger and McDermott’s experiment in 1995. The participants will be presented with sequence of words visually, and then they would have to classify a set of words as either in the sequence or not in the sequence. Our hypothesis is that people will create false memories and recall distractor words that are related to the sequence of words presented significantly m...
People fail to notice when they are presented with something different from what they originally chose and tend to come up with explanations as to why they picked that specific choice. In this research paper, Cochran, Greenspan, Bogart, and Loftus discuss how choice blindness can lead to distorted eyewitness memories. In their experiment, the studied if the participants in their research realized modifications to their memory reports and if these changes could possibly effect the participants’ memory. Cochran, Greenspan, Bogart, and Loftus conducted two different experiments. Experiment 1 was constructed on two self-sourced vs. other-sourced between participants and two misinformation vs. control within participants. They had participants watch a slideshow that showed a woman intermingling with three other characters and one of them steals her wallet. Then they completed a personality measure in 15 minute retention interval which was followed by questions about their memories from the slideshow. After, they were given another 15 minute retention interval and then shown their responses to the memory question, but three of their responses were revised. According to Cochran, Greenspan, Bogart, and Loftus (2016), “experiment 1 demonstrated that when witnesses were exposed to altered versions of their own memory reports for episodic details of an event, their memories changed to be consistent with
The mistaken recollection of information or the recollection of an event that never happened is known as a false memory (Rajagopal & Montgomery, 2011). The study of false memories has been of interest to cognitive psychologists (Otagaar, Smeets & Scoboria, 2013) for many years as it implies that human memory is vulnerable to the influence of external information, it also implies that our ability to recall events may not always be accurate. One major issue that has arisen with the research on false memories is the argued validity of eyewitness testimony (Wade, Green & Nash, 2011). Eyewitness testimony is the verified report made by someone who witnessed a crime (Wade et.al., 2011). False memories can interfere with the correct recollection of criminal offences which can potentially result in inaccurate accusations of a crime (Wade et.al., 2011). Researchers have been interested in studying false memories to develop a better understanding of how false memories work, and to what extent our memories can be assumed accurate (Jou & Flores, 2013).
...Dermott, K. B. (1996). Misinformation effects in recall: Creating false memories through repeated retrieval. Journal of Memory and Language, 5(2), 300-318. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1996.0017