If we were to hold our brains in the palm of our hands we’d be holding a mass of pink responsible of many aspects of who we are. The brain and it’s ability to retain memory has been a very useful tool not only in the court, but in everyday life. A world without memory would make living much more difficult especially in the case of trying to solve a crime. Witness testimonies are a heavily relied on piece of evidence in court, but can be an affected when memory is altered by external factors, and distortions.
Biologically, many parts of the brain work to store memory. According to “The Human Memory” the cerebral cortex “plays a key role in memory”. The prefrontal cortex processes short-term memories and long-term memories which is an important
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The brain has different ways memory fails one being distortion. Distortion, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is defined as “the alteration of repressed or unconscious elements before they appear in the conscious mind”. A form of distortion is misattribution which is the confusion of the source of information a memory came from. This confusion alters aspects of a witness’s memory which affects the response a witness gives when questioned. An example a Psychology textbook presents is one of a sexual assault victim who was watching a television show during the crime. Later, when asked to identify the suspect she gave the appearance of a man she saw on the television show rather than the actual perpetrator. The television works as a form of suggestibility, but the actual confusion between the two men is a distortion that stems from wiring in the brain, specifically the frontal lobe found in the article “Misattribution, False recognition and the sins of memory” by Schacter and Dodson. The distortion of misattribution resulted in the delay in custody of the actual perpetrator. Furthermore, memory blindness is another form of distortion that can affect the way memory is received by those in criminal justice. The academic article, “Memory Blindness” by Cochan, Greenspan and others describes how memory or “choice blindness suggests that people’s introspective abilities can be quite limited” in which they performed research to test how accurate are witnesses able to detect misinformation in their own testimonies. The authors stated that “ people can often be misled in the short term about their own preferences” and tested it by giving participants of their experiment false versions of their own memory. The participants recounted their memories from a presentation, were given a fifteen minute retention period, then were given what they depicted as their
Definition of memory and it's functions is difficult to illustrate by a single sentence. Consequently we use several metaphors to describe memory implicitly. Our beliefs, perceptions and imagination influence memory. The fact gave rise to memory being described as a reconstructive process, explaining that memory is not an exact record of a particular experience. Instead we bring various components together and fill in the blanks with our predisposed schemas while recalling. The metaphor building "an entire dinosaur skeleton from fossils" is the indirect way to describe memory as cognitive reconstruction. Remembering includes using schemas which are the mental representations of a concept, person or an event.They rejuvenate an incomplete memory such that it is perceived to be an undiminished one. Of course there are errors experienced when recalling which supports the idea of imperfect memory. These can be errors of commission, adding details which were not a part of the experience and errors of omission, which is excluding some aspects of the experience. In this paper I will support the selected metaphor and will provide evidence approving it.
For cognitive neuroscientists who study memory, it is a commonly accepted fact that human memory is imperfect. People regularly forget, misattribute, or confabulate information that is presented to them. In his seminal review, Daniel Schacter (1999, 2002) notes seven sins of memory. However, the three most relevant to this study are insufficient attention, misattribution, and pre-existing beliefs and biases.
Can memories be biased? Researchers Postarino and Doyle-Portillio (2013); Bernstein and Loftus (2009); and Bartholomew (2009) found increasing evidence to suggest that the answer to this question is yes. Explicit and implicit memories are encoded differently, but it appears both can be fallible. Also worth noting, is that this can happen without a person conscious awareness. Kolb and Whishaw (2014) examined studies that gave participants a list of words, then gave them a second list. The second list contained some, but not all items from the first list, but many participants thought the word sugar was on both, when in fact it was only on the second. Similar words like cake, sweet, and candy were on the first so this seemed to confuse participants. This phenomena researchers refer to as false memory. False memory is different from a lie; unlike a lie, the individual in this case may give false account of the past truly believing that he or she is telling the truth. In other words, false memory can simply be defined as mental experience that is wrongfully considered as the truthful representation of the past. False memories can result in both minor and serious consequences Bernstein & Loftus, 2009; Bartholomew, 2009).
Memory is a group of related mental processes that are involved in acquiring, storing, and retrieving information (Hockenberry and Hocenberry page 232). I will be addressing two specific types of memory: short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory holds temporary information transferred from sensory memory or long-term memory. Sensory memory is the first stage of memory and obtains information for a brief amount of time. Short-term memory is also called active memory and is stored in the prefrontal cortex which is the most active part of the brain during an activity. Short-term memory can hold information for roughly twenty seconds, but sensory memory holds information for a shorter amount of time. We usually store things such
Making and storing memories is a complex process involving many regions of the brain. (3). Most experts agree that we have two stages of memories - short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory is the immediate memory we have when we first hear or perceive someth...
One of the most interesting phenomenon related to memory is memory distortions. One way in which they occur is through suggestibility, where people begin to remember false experiences if researchers suggested to them that they experienced it (Sternberg and Sternberg, 2012). In real-life situations, this is caused in part by memory being constructive “in that prior experiences affects how we recall things and what we actually recall from memory” (Sternberg and Sternberg, 2012). People’s prior experiences, including their bias and expectations, may influence how they experience false memory formations; the formation of false memories is also affected by several possible factors, one of which may be sleep deprivation (Frenda, Patihis, Loftus,
Memories can be altered based on acquisition, storage, and retrieval. Acquisition is what we notice or perceive based on what we are paying attention to. Storage is what information gets stored into one’s memory. Retrieval correlates with the false memory syndrome, which is recalling a previous traumatic experience that is false but believed to be true. The false memory syndrome is often noticed during police interrogations and leads to coerced confessions, which is when the individual being interrogated is essentially pressured to confess.
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.
Contemporary societies in the United States are comprised of multicultural groups. Each person in these groups possesses different cognitive abilities that are possibly accompanied with distinct mental barriers that inhibit regions of the brain. The difficulties of remembering specific and accurate details of events transpired is a pervasive occurrence for those that have been present while a crime is committed. This is problematic as a person’s memory of a crime committed is crucial to law enforcement officers’ ability to apprehend the correct person responsible for having committed a crime. Law officials frequently request dependable eyewitness memory from bystanders present, as their ability to accurately identify the offender
The malleability of memories has long been established through research conducted in a variety of context. The most well known context that individual predisposition for false memory development has been chronicled in is in the realm of eyewitness testimony. However, research into false memories has also focused on its implications in everyday life and in a variety of clinical settings as well. This background research is important beca...
The Memory Trace Replacement Hypothesis states that MPI replaces the memories that were created during the original experience (Goldstein, 2011, pg.224). Part of the reconsolidation process, reactivating a memory has the potential of forming new, which occurred to Jennifer through the misleading events, such as identifying the suspect from the photo lineup while comparing to others and receiving misleading feedback from the investigator; pointing towards Cotton. This is evident in the moment Cotton attends retrial and Bobby Poole, the actual perpetrator, is present. Jennifer stated that she felt nothing towards Poole, but rather felt strong emotions against the defendant. She had actually replaced the memory of the perpetrator’s face and felt completely confident that it was Cotton. This is also evident in the Elizabeth Loftus’ experiment with the stop sign and yield sign. Certainly improving interviewing techniques could help the witness recreate the event and making all the changes stated above could prevent from new experiences impairing original
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.
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).
Loftus has focused the bulk of her career on both the psychological and legal aspects of distorted or false memories, and her work demonstrates the facility with which memories and beliefs can be molded. Her findings regarding the strength of eyewitness testimony and repressed traumatic memories have helped change the notion that such testimony is absolutely reliable (Zagorski, N., 2005).”
Learning to tie shoes and ride a bike requires the encoding, storing, and retrieving of past observations of the procedure. With a lot of practice, children master these skills so well that they are able to remember them the rest of their lives. Memory is the storing of information over time. It is one of the most important concepts in learning; if things are not remembered, no learning can take place. As a process, memory refers to the "dynamic mechanism associated with the retention and retrieval of information about past experiences" (Sternberg 260). We use our memory about the past to help us understand the present. The study or memory in psychology is used in different ways, as well as there are many different ways to study how memory works in humans. In psychology there are many tasks used to measure memory, and different types of memory storages that human's use, such as sensory storing, or short term storing. There are also a lot of techniques that humans use to improve their memory, which they can use to learn, such as mnemonic devices. All these things can be classified as important issues in the study of human memory and ways of learning.