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Essay on Processes and Stages of Memory

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Donald Thomson is a psychologist that participated as a guest on the Australian talk show concerning eyewitness testimony. Donald disputed that by being an excellent eyewitness, one must be able to notice definite aspects of the facial appearance to aid in identifying a suspect. To properly identify a suspect as an eyewitness it is important to recall skin color, eye color, facial symmetry, average height, body build, and approximate age of the perpetrator. During this broadcasting, a woman that was watching the show was assaulted and raped. Shortly after she regained consciousness, she was interviewed by the police officer. Without hesitation, she identified Donald as her aggressor. Luckily for the psychologist Donald Thomson, it was a …show more content…

Our minds create memories that need to go through the process of remembering to recall events. The action of remembering is made of three processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval. “The first process, encoding, involves transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory” (Wood, et al., 2011, p.186). For example: “Remembering important information is imperative for efficient memory performance, encoding important information is key in the health field” (Ariel, R., & Castel, A. D. 2014). “Selective attention is the tool that allows us to eliminate interference from the relevant information. The second memory process, storage, involves keeping or maintaining information in memory” (Wood, et al., 2011, p.186). Physiological changes in the brain must take place for encoded information to be stored. This is called consolidation. “Consolidation involves physiological changes that require the synthesis of protein molecules” (Wood, et al., 2011, p.186). For example: A group of individuals “tested consolidation in neural mechanisms that support the extraction of general knowledge across episodic memories. Half of the subjects responded to the combination of facial features and locations, whereas the other half did not” (Sweegers, C. G., Takashima, A., Fernández, G., & Talamini, L. M. 2014). “The third and final process, retrieval, occurs when

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