The Importance Of Short-Term Memory And Long-Term Memory

Eyewitness evidence has always been considering critical information when it comes to court trials and convictions. But how reliable are eyewitnesses? Scientific research has shown that eyewitness’s memories are often not accurate or reliable. Human memory is very malleable and is easily changed by suggestion. Relying on eyewitness evidence instead of scientific data often leads to wrongful convictions. Scientific evidence is much more reliable, and should be more important in court cases than eyewitness evidence.

Memory is divided into three categories. These categories consist of: sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory, out of these short term memory is the main focus in this essay. It has been widely researched due to interest of how much memory can be stored, how long this memory can be stored for and what information is memorised.

Despite such criticism the effect of an eyewitness testimony is still obviously powerful which makes this issue that much more controversial. That vast increase previously mentioned was based off of a simple statement rather than an actual witness being present, which shows that a testimony does not need to be confirmed visually or audibly to be trusted. Although, the witness involved in said mock trial was an adult, as adult memory is trusted to be more accurate than that of a child’s. Children have been said to be too suggestible and their memories too inferior to be fully trusted (Leippe et al., p. 182, 1992). To test this out researchers in the article, “Eyewitness Persuasion: How and

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.

Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.

Factors such as misinformation and eyewitness talk can easily affect the memory of eyewitnesses and therefore affect their testimony_. Evidence which is usually provided during eyewitness memory reports helps to determine the guilt or innocence of a perpetrator in a criminal proceeding_. With the help of many basic psychological and neuroscience studies, it has been indicated that because memory is a reconstructive process it is likely to be influenced and vulnerable to change and misinformation_. Due to memory being vulnerable, any minor memory misrepresentation can have severe consequences when used in the courtroom_. Memory errors when regarding the identification of a perpetrator of a specific crime has been focused on during research

Research studies in relation to eyewitness testimony have been going on for hundreds of years. A study done in 1999 by Marcus D. Durham and Francis C. Dane at Mercer University, looked at ways to assess prospective jurors’ knowledge of the factors that may influence eyewitness behavior. Those factors include topics such as race, memory processes, age, and stress. In addition, the researchers “compared students’

There are many factors to consider when psychologists and scientists are trying to figure out reliability of eyewitness testimony. The ability to recall or

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.

Have you ever been a witness to a crime? Would you feel comfortable if prosecutors relied on your eye witness testimony alone for a conviction? According to “The Magic of the Mind”, eyewitness testimony which relies on the accuracy of human memory, has an enormous impact on the outcome of a trial. Eyewitness testimony is a legal term. During an eyewitness testimony, the witness usually goes into an account of the crime he or she has witnessed. This can include details of the crime or identification of perpetrators. Eyewitness testimony is an important area of research in cognitive psychology and human memory (simplypsychology.com). Eyewitness testimony can be affected by many psychological factors such as:

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

Researcher Elizabeth Loftus, encapsulated the reliability of human memory and the notion about the inaccuracy of eyewitness accounts. She hypothesized that if eyewitnesses are asked questions with false presuppositions, the erroneous information will be incorporated into the witness’s memory and alter the memory of the witnessed event.

The stage of skill acquisition in which a skill no longer relies on conscious effort is the:

In sum, we can conclude that eyewitness memory still hold important place in investigation and prosecution process yet it is flawed. Based on research that I reviewed in this paper, there are several aspects that important to enhance eyewitness memory such as the repetition and precision-accuracy trade off. In contrast there are some factors that can threatens quality of memory such as such as avoiding co-witness situation, less focus on the confidence level to measure accuracy and delayed effect. These factors need to be prioritize to create a better environment to recall accurate information.

Short Term Memory Loss. Ironically most of us don’t even think about memory that often, much less Short Term Memory. Because of that, this psychological disorder often tends to get overlooked for a small problem that no one wants to take serious. Most people would recognize this disorder from the popular movie, Finding Nemo. In which one of the main characters suffers from short term memory loss. In the film it’s taken as a lovable flaw, instead of the serious disorder that it is. But Short Term Memory is a lot more than one disorder found in a character in a movie. It is a somber disorder that could happen to any of us. This paper will be going through the gravity of this disorder and the causes to its victims.