Eyewitness Testimonies

The study of creation of false memories has been a topic of interest since the 1930s when Bartlett (1932) conducted the first experiment on the topic. Though the results of this experiment were never replicated, they contributed greatly to research by distinguishing between reproductive and reconstructive memory (Bartlett 1932 as cited in Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Reproductive memory refers to accurate production of material from memory and is assumed to be associated with remembering simplified materials (e.g., lists). Reconstructive memory emphasizes the active process of filling in missing elements while remembering and is associated with materials rich in meaning (e.g., stories).

Eyewitness testimonies are based on a person’s ability to recall what took place accurately. Memory research has proven that a person’s memory is not a recording but it is reconstructive. Loftus and Palmer’s study set out to prove that the memory could be reconstructed through the use of language.

This method is appropriate to observe one’s false memory since it is designed bias the participants to recall particular words that was not in the sequence that they were presented with. These particular distractor words were sleep, needle, sweet, chair, mountain, and rough and they were presented one at a time. The sequence of words When the participants report that one of these particular distractor words was in the sequence, then that is the evidence that the participants have created false memories.

The phenomenon of explaining false memory occurrences is rising. Researchers have developed a paradigm known as “Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm” in efforts to examine false memories in depth (Dehon, Laroi & Van der Linden, 2011). In the DRM paradigm, participants are introduced to and asked to memorize a list of correlated words congregating towards a vital subject word that is never introduced (Dehon, Laroi & Van der Linden, 2011). The rate that participants recall this false decoy is alarming. Researchers have provided several explanations to explain for the false memories in the DRM paradigm (Dehon, Laroi & Van der Linden, 2011). The two most notable in explaining false memories in the DRM paradigm are the fuzzy-trace theory and the activation/monitoring theory (Dehon, Laroi & Van der Linden, 2011). While the two theories are particularly dissimilar, they both sustain that information developing throughout list encoding attributes an essential part in false memory construction (Dehon, Laroi & Van der Linden, 2011).

There are many different factors that play a part in the increased chance of a witness correctly identifying a suspect. Such factors should be brought to the attention of the jury and the judge to help in properly assessing whether a witness is correctly identifying a suspect. A study by Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja (2010) found that of the three different types of people: judge, jury, and general public, that for the most part all where fairly ill-informed on the reliability of eyewitness testimony with judges having the most. Judges only had about an 8% difference in knowledge when compared to jurors. With this information it is very clear that education on the reliability of eyewitness testimony needs to become more of a general knowledge information for the everyone, especially people who are involved in upholding the law. Another factor to look into when evaluating the accuracy eyewitness testimony is the role that memory plays. Memory is divided into three processes: perceiving, remembering, and recalling information (Simmonsen, 2013). There is plenty of room in all three of those stages to forget or falsely remember something. Some factors that play a part when a person perceives an event is the amount of time they are exposed to the event and the suspect. A study conducted by Horry, Halford, Brewer, Milne, & Bull. (2014) found that witnesses were increasingly more likely to correctly identify a suspect if they had been exposed to the suspect for sixty

Neurobiological studies show that both suppression and recall and the creation of false memories are possible. (Kandel, 1994) In this paper both sides of the debate will be analyzed and evaluated.

The sole purpose of this experiment was to test the accuracy of eyewitness accounts. It was hypothesized that more than 50% of the questions asked would be incorrect. The results fully support the hypothesis. Out of the five questions that were asked, only one was answered correctly by both participants. One of the major factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness testimony is reconstructive memory. Reconstructive memory refers to the idea that the retrieval of memories does not occur in the accurate form but rather as a recollection of memories involving a process of trying to reconstruct past events, This idea was first produced by Sir Fredrick Bartlett where he suggested that certain pieces of information is stored and when it time to recall it, the pieces are then reconstructed based on personal interpretation. (McLeod, 2009) It is also believed that if new information is introduced after the event but before the actual recalling of the event, then the newly introduced information would have tremendous influence on what the person actually recalls. Therefore, memory can be regarded as flexible in nature.

A specific process of which we must doubt the reliability of is the role of memory in eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is used as vital evidence in the legal system in order to convict criminals, however, it does rely on the reliability of memory, which has been a highly contested topic. Previously, eyewitness testimony has been a highly reliable source in the conviction process. It was trusted by courts of law and law enforcement, however, various research studies have now created reasonable doubt behind the reliability of these testimonies due to the fact that it is now evident that memory can be distorted and reconstructed, an active process in which information

Researchers conducted a couple studies in which participants were shown a series of pictures and asked to recall them in daily tests. Half of the 54 participants were hypnotized and according to study they recalled six or more items that they did not remember earlier, despite the fact that those items were false. Based on this study, 90 percent of newly discovered facts by participants were actually false, but participants were certain of their memory. This notion displays

The human memory is subject to a multitude of errors, including source misattributions, distortion and creation of false memories. In order to do justice to this paper one must first determine what is “False memory”? False memory is memory for an event that did not occur or distorted memory of actual events (Gleaves, Smith, Butler, & Spiegel, 2004). This type of memory has been an area of intense research interest for both theoretical and practical reasons and psychologists have long been interested in memory illusions and distortions, as such errors can inform theories of how the memory works (Hunt & Ellis, 2004).

A false memory is simply a memory that did not occur. An actual experience can become distorted as best illustrated by the Cog Lab experiment on false memories accessed through Argosy University. The experiment is outlined as follows: a participant is given a list of words that are highly relative in nature at a rate of about one word every 2 seconds. At the finish of the given list, the participant is then shown a list of words in which he or she is to recall the words from the original list. A special distractor is inserted to the list, and this word, although highly relative in nature, was not in the original list. For example, the

False memory studies also directly focused on eyewitness testimonies. Gerrie, Belcher and Garry (2006) studied video clips, as they most likely reflect real-life. By omitting either crucial or non-crucial steps they tested what participants were likely to falsely recall. They found that false memory effects did occur for those shown the video with the non-crucial steps missing. These participants were more likely to fill in what was missing and falsely remember non-crucial steps in between. This was found without any external suggestions on what should occur. This can benefit eyewitness testimony as by determining what aspects of a situation are more susceptible can better determine what memories may be false.

An Article Review of “Memory blindness: Altered memory reports lead to distortion in eyewitness memory” by Cochran et al. (2016)

Memory does not work like a video camera, smoothly recording every detail. Instead, memory is more of a constructive process. We remember the details that we find most important and relevant. Due to the reconstructive nature of memory, the assimilation of old and new information has the ability to cause vulnerable memories to become distorted. This is also known as the misinformation effect (Loftus, 1997). It is not uncommon for individuals to fill in memory gaps with what they assume they must have experienced. We not only distort memories for events that we have observed, but, we may also have false memories for events that never occurred at all. False memories are “often created by combing actual memories with suggestions received from

The article is about false memory. The researchers are trying to find out the effect of planting positive false memory in an individual. The authors of the article are; Cara Laney from University of Leicester, Erin K. Morris from University of California, Irvine, Daniel M. Bernstein from Kwantlen University College and University of Washington, Briana M. Wakefield from University of