How Memories Create Distorted Experiences

For example, a canoe would be changed to boat and ghosts were often left out of the participant’s story. The folk tales became more clichéd, conventional and shorter, from 330 to 180 words. This experiment supports Bartlett’s idea for reconstructive memory. The participants could not make sense of the folk tale so their scemas changed them into something they understood.

The experiment conducted by Loftus, Miller and Burns investigated how information supplied after an incident can affect the memory of those who witnessed it. In the article the experimenters tested the hypothesis that information received by a witness after an event will affect their memory of said event, whether or not it was accurate. This is of particular interest because if the information can affect a person's memory, this could very well discredit eyewitness testimony in criminal and civil trials. A person’s ability to encode accurate, relevant information into their memory is pertinent when giving a witness testimony in front of a judge and jury.

‘The language used in eyewitness testimony can alter an individual’s memory’, the Loftus and Palmer study was carried out to test that hypothesis. Two experiments were carried out within the study. The study had a quasi-experimental design. Experiment one involved forty-five students participates, the participants were shown various films of automobile accidents, after the participants viewed the films they were questioned about what they have just seen. A number of questions specific to the automobile accident were presented in a questionnaire to the participants, however the question contained a paramount question of interest, this being

The investigation into memory - how we encode, store and retrieve data - made great advances in the 20th century. Along with biological influences memories define who we are, without them our individuality would be lost. This essay will scrutinize the multi-store model of memory and working model of memory to determine their legitimacy. Each model will be examined on its merits at how it explains cognitive functions. Through tools such as the cognitive interview, eyewitness testimony has been deployed in countries around the world to send millions to lengthy prison sentences. Despite its widespread use, the question remains: how much can we trust someone’s memory in the courtroom?

One supporting study of reconstructive memory is Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts study in 1932. Bartlett found that after telling participants a story, participants remembered the main plot of the story by changed unfamiliar elements to make sense and help remember the story by using terms more familiar to their own cultural expression. Bartlett found that Participants shortened the story as retellings went on. After 6-7 retells the story was shortened from 330 words to 180. This supports reconstructive memory as it provides evidence of the idea that we have a ‘notepad’ where we store the most important information of a memory and fill in the gaps using schemas that relate to our cultural background.

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.

It is said that there are many different versions to a story. There is one persons story, then there is an other person’s story, and then, there is the truth. “Our memories change each time they are recalled. What we recall is only a facsimile of things gone by.” Dobrin, Arthur. "Your Memory Isn't What You Think It Is." (online magazine). Psychology Today. July 16, 2013. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201307/your-memory-isnt-what-you-think-it-is. Every time a story is told, it changes. From Disney movies to books, to what we tell our friends and colleagues. Sometimes the different sides to the story challenge the

An eyewitness can change the course of an investigation. However, how reliable that can be? People believe that we remember an event as exactly as it was, such as replaying the facts. Elizabeth Loftus is one of the leading researchers in the area of memory, and she found that memories are not accurately re-created. Reconstructing facts from our lives cannot be harmful, but it can be critical when deciding a criminal event. Loftus studies demonstrated that a simple wording question might change the eyewitness answer.

The aim of Loftus and Palmer’s study was to investigate how language can be used to manipulate or distort one’s memory in an eyewitness testimony.

The two concepts that I resonated with are Memory and the Psychodynamic theory. Starting with the Psychodynamic theory is an approach to psychology that studies the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions, and how they may relate to early childhood experience. This theory is most closely associated with the work of Sigmund Freud, and with psychoanalysis, a type of psychotherapy that attempts to explore the patient’s unconscious thoughts and emotions so that the person is better able to understand him or herself. The second one is Memory; understanding how memory works will help you improves your memory. Which is an essential key to attaining knowledge. Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting. I chose the two concepts because throughout the class they stood out to the most. Understanding the conscious, subconscious mind and also memory. I’m interested in understanding the human behavior.

Recalling a memory is a much more complex process than simply playing back a recording; that is, the sensory information we take in about an event may not necessarily be remembered identically to the way in which it was experienced. The process of encoding and retrieving memories is complex and comprised of many factors. Not everything we perceive becomes stored as memory, and the information that does make it past our mind’s filter is often subject to distortion. The mind can be highly affected by suggestion, even to the point of forming “memories” of events which never took place, i.e. false memories.

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.

Every person on this planet has had false memories. False memories exist because our memories are reconstructed each time we think about them and they can be easily influenced. A person with vivid imagery could easily construct an event and believe that this nonexistent event actually happened. This person feels that this memory is real, but we cannot be sure that this memory is real by judging our own feelings. In addition, repeated leading questions can encourage younger children to imagine nonexistent situations. The child says that they don’t remember or that a particular event didn’t happen, however, the constant questioning makes them believe that the event occurred. I don’t think we want or memory distortions corrected. For example,

Memory seems to be less secure and reliable than is popularly thought. Bartlett and other social scientists have tested the security of our memory and have accumulated significant results showing the limitations of our memory and the extent to which our abilities of recall often play us up. Bartlett, for instance, discovered that people formed memories in line with their cultural indoctrination and schemas. Following Bartlett's publicized results, researchers have been interested in finding determinants and characteristics of false recall (i.e. reasons for construction of faulty memories). Some researchers posited that backwards associations prompted this false recall, whilst others suggested that it was the lapse of time subsequent to the event that caused these illusionary memories.

In film, flashbacks are interruptions that take the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. They are often used to provide background and context to recount current events of a narrative filling in crucial backstories. In its basic form, the flashback is introduced when a presented image dissolves to another image of the past, which can be either as “a story-being-told or a subjective memory.” (Turim, pg. 1) For example, dream sequences and memories are methods used to present flashbacks. They become visual representation to the audience as an act of remembering past experiences of reality. Imagination also plays an important role in shaping the mind and the story similar to memories and the formation of reality. Imagination is usually integrated into animation as an artistic creation to express the artists’ ideas or memory. But where does the use of imagination and memories stop? By examining memory represented in animation and film, through Bartlett’s theory of schema, we can see how the film develops an active organized method to recognize reality through memory. This paper is examining five films based on the theme of memory, thus arguing that imagination does not distorted memory in animation, but create a role as a form of embellishment for the film to help memory.