Particular Eyewitness

A study done in 2005 showed that when 30 statements regarding eyewitness issues, jurors disagreed with memory experts in 87% of the issues, and judges disagreed with 60% of the issues (Benton et al. 117). Therefore, even though jurors and judges agreed with memory experts on more statements regarding “memory myths” than did jurors, their understanding of these memory myths still greatly deviated from memory experts; which shows the uninformative nature of juror and the

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.

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

Eyewitness Identification may be more reliable than we believe, if they are handled and assessed correctly. Eyewitness testimonies are often used by law enforcement officers to identify suspects and play a huge role in getting convictions. If witnesses identify the wrong person, an innocent man could be punished for something they had no involvement in. There are many theories to explain why witnesses may identify the wrong person as the perpetrator of a crime. The different ways we retrieve memories affects what we remember. Other theories have to deal with how lineups or photo arrays are displayed to the witness and the effect they have on the result. All of the different theories of how our memories can be influenced, cause people to argue

The authenticity of repressed memories has been the cause of much controversy in the psychology world. Some even refer to these controversies as the “memory wars”. One side supports the idea of repressed memories, saying that there are multiple reasons for memories to be forgotten and retrieved later. The latter disagrees with how legitimate repressed memories are, since there is no way to prove the honesty of the memories presented.

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has been particularly concerned with how subsequent information can affect an eyewitness’s account of an event. The fact the eyewitness testimony can be unreliable and influenced by leading questions is illustrated by the psychology study by Loftus and Palmer (1974). The aim of the study was to test their hypothesis that the language used in eyewitness testimony can alter memory. To test this, Loftus and Palmer asked people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different forms of questions.

During the criminal investigation process, eyewitness identification is one of the most common, but convincing evidence used in courtrooms. Although accurate eyewitness identification can assist with convicting guilty parties, inaccurate identification can lead to prosecution of the innocent. Detectives use three types of lineup procedures; field, physical, and photographic lineups. These procedures are critical to identifying those responsible for committing a criminal offense and should be performed with accuracy and reliability.

The memory of an eyewitness has always been an endless dispute throughout the narration of its existence. The word of an individual holds the most substance; it’s the only real thing of value that person hold, having a witness of a crime is a criminal’s vilest nightmare. There is a phrase that may have been heard in movies and reality, ‘eyewitness do not live too long.’ This phrase has range amongst people revealing the reputation of eye witnessing for the majority and jury. All evidence used to convict a person has to go through a vigilant examination process especially the testimony of an eyewitness. So much emphasis is put on a truthful and accurate testimony because there has been a false testimony, which cause consequences and complications. Criminal justice systems should demand their district to notice there is an occurrence of bad witness memory, because the brain will juggle and play games with the hauler. Predominantly, the mix up happens because of the perception particularities the individuals mind has mad up and the original information. Memory is simply the development of perception, how the brain process what is seen and reproduces it later. Since there is a chance that the reproduction of once memory will be wrong that makes it essential to the individual does not damage the facts. This accentuates the stress on the knowledge of the eyewitness well-being

It is a common misconception that the human memory is accurate and reliable (Poston, 2014). For example, the supposition that memory is mostly dependable forms a major part of the legal system. Judges, attorneys and juries are inclined to trust the testimony of a confident eyewitness (Van Wallendael et al., 2007) and confessions are considered among the most compelling forms of evidence (e.g., Cutler, 2012; Kassin, Bogart, & Kerner, 2012). However, 30 years of ground-breaking work by Elizabeth Loftus around the theory of false memory has cast doubt over the role memory should play in legal proceedings (Loftus, 2005). Loftus defines false memory as a phenomenon that occurs when a person believes they remember something that did not actually

The Retrieval-induced Forgetting in an Eyewitness Paradigm article is based on an experiment done to test retrieval- induced forgetting. Even though research was done on this topic before, the authors took it one step forward to either prove or deny the theory of retrieval-induced forgetting. They wanted to see if repeated questioning would impact a witnesses’ ability to recall certain events or even specific details. This was done by showing subjects different slides of the aftermath of theft. They were then asked to recall selected details of what they saw several different times. Previous experiments have proven that there are both positive and negative effects to addressing

Various factors can impact the precision of observer memory. The factors of the criminal justice system are incorporated. For example, different witness and occasion attributes, and additionally the individuals who are subjected to the criminal justice system’s

The Eyewitness testimony has been used for a long time as evidence in a crime scene. Many psychologists tried to answer the question if the eyewitness testimony is correct and true all the time or not. This research study done by STARR (2012) addresses that eyewitness memory can be changed depends on the satiation and what kind of question that we ask the eyewitness during the police investigations or in the court room. While STARR’s article raises timely and important issue, he included a good scientific research explaining how false eyewitness could be.

Memory attributions are based on various qualitative features of the mental experience. Previous studies have found that despite one experiences an intuitive sense of memory, in which the person believes to be an accurate recording of an encounter; empirical results have shown that this experience can be a reconstructive process, which can lead to the development of false memories (Farrants, 1998; Schacter and Addis, 2007). Past researchers have referred ‘false memories’ as memories that took place within experiments, but experiences that do not correspond to experimentally presented stimuli (Roediger & McDermott, 1995; McDermott, 1996; Payne et al., 1996; Read, 1996; Robinson & Roediger, 1997 cited in Gleaves, Smith, Butler & Spiegel, 2004).

There has been substantial research done on areas of false memory and child suggestibility in eyewitness testimony. One relevant research is the study of “The origin of children’s implanted false memory” by Henry Otgaar, Bruno Verschuere, Ewout H. Meijer, and Kim van Oorsouw. In this article, Otgaar et al. (2012) conducted a study to determine whether implanted false memories in children represent actual memory traces or are they merely a result of compliance. Participants consisted of forty-five children, both males and females between the ages eight and ten, from elementary schools in the Netherlands. At the start of the experiment, the researchers interviewed each child individually about their memories from past events. During the interview, the children were presented with a true narrative about an experienced event (first day at school) first then followed by a false narrative about a fictitious event (hot air balloon

This webpage presents false memory at a glance. The webpage covers topics relating specifically to false memory, such as the definitions, causes, impacts, and who is affected. The author distinguishes false memory from other forms of memory fallibility. Also, the author indicates the various factors that influence false memory like misinformation, misattribution, existing knowledge, and suggestions from therapists or investigators. Finally, the author concludes that false memory is problematic especially in criminal trials and eyewitness testimony, where false memories are one of the leading causes of false convictions due to false identification of a suspect, or false recollections during interrogations.