The Past And Future

Good Morning Gentleman and Ladies – I appreciate the DA giving me an opportunity to speak to you. I have read the background information on your specific case. Today’s presentation will present on overview of the research concerning false memories and how such findings could apply to this particular case. I will then outline some situations that are known to increase the likelihood of false memories and end with strategies that may reduce the occurrence of false memories

For a society that is greatly influenced by Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds and Bones, a confession of the offender is seen as an ultimate checkmate of the case because it implies the guilt of the confessor. Thus, a confession, especially the ones with detailed account and perfect representation of emotions (Leo, 2008), outweighs the evidences of innocence and stirs the case against the accused (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985). People believe that they are open-minded about the possibility of false confession but in reality, the public, law enforcers and justice officials have biases that often infer guilt to the suspect instead of investigating for the truth, which leads to wrongful conviction. According to Leo and Drizin (2004), false confession is the primary cause of law miscarriage (Leo and Drizzin, 2004). False confessors lived many years in jail before being exonerated while others remain imprisoned (Leo and Drizzin, 2004).

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).

False memories can consist of either remembering items or events that never happened, or remembering them differently from the way they actually occurred. The DRM paradigm has been extensively analysed, and it has been concluded that participants readily recall words that are associated with presented lists, however, not presented in the lists. This phenomenon is known as false recall. The 240 participants in the study, were orally presented with 6 lists of semantically related words that contained 15 word per list, presented to them in a male voice recording with each word being presented in a one second rate. They were later asked to write down the words they remembered in any order just like the previous literature study Louis C. Sanford, John E. Fisk, 2009, where the participants were asked to verbally recall the words, and it was later concluded that extraverts falsely recalled more critical lures and non-critical words relative to the other two groups and that the DRM paradigm may be developed by an automatic spread of activation from presented words to critical lures.

When a person has a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event, they are experiencing a false memory. A false memory is a mental experience that is mistaken for a veridical representation of an event from one’s personal past. (Kendra Cherry) There are two types of false memories: minor and major. A minor false memory can be some as simple as someone thinking they left their keys on the table, but actually left them in the bedroom. A major false memory could be someone believing they have been abducted from aliens. False memories occur frequently and can take control over someone’s life. Therapists have many approaches that they use to try and help one recollect their memory. While trying to help, they may actually worsen the problem. Research supports the salience of false recollections over accurate ones in people, potentially indicating that every person in a given society can fall victim to their effects. Revealing that this theory has more truth than many expect affecting many people within our societies.

In November of 2014, Julia Shaw and Stephan Porter published a research article which further explored the generation of false memories related to crime. The purpose of this study was to corroborate a theory researchers have long suspected, which maintains the possibility to intentionally generate false memories within an individual through the use of influential tactics in a controlled setting. By attempting to generate false memories within two independent groups of participants, researchers were able to compare the success of the interviewer to induce false memories in both groups.

Some people might argue that getting lost in the mall is too common of an experience to demonstrate false memories. For this argument, Hyman et al. constructed an experiment to show the occurrence of false memories in less that common childhood events including spilling punch at a wedding and a sprinkler system going off a at grocery store. For one variation of this study, Hyman et al. implanted the memory of an overnight hospitalization with a high fever, and possible ear infection. The participants were told they were going to be asked about events from their childhood based on information provided by their parents. They were then given the titles of the events (including the false visit to the hospital) and asked to

The process of interrogation is a very complex matter that draws a very thin line between what is legally and ethically acceptable. During an interrogation, police officers must take extreme precautions to ensure they don’t violate interrogation procedures, and that information or confessions are not being inaccurately induced, due to interrogative suggestibility. Research indicates that the concept of interrogative suggestibility derives from the notion that police tend to believe that almost all suspects are guilty, and therefore only confess if guilty (Fulero & Wrightsman, 2009). Because of this believe, interrogators often extract false confessions without realizing that some suspects are subject to suggestibility. Psychologist argue that when suspects feel anxious, lack a strong

For a society that is greatly influenced by Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds and Bones, a confession of the offender is seen as an ultimate checkmate of a case. A confession, especially the ones with detailed account and perfect representation of emotions (Leo, 2008), implies the guilt of the confessor, outweighs the evidences of innocence and stirs the case against the accused (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985). However, not all confessions are true. The public, law enforcers and justice officials believe that they are open-minded about the possibility of false confession but in reality, everyone have biases that infers guilt to the suspect which often leads to wrongful conviction. According to Drizin and Leo (2004), false confession is the primary cause of law miscarriage (Drizin & Leo, 2004). False confessors lived many years in jail before being discharge while others remain imprisoned (Drizin & Leo, 2004).

Numerous studies have been done on the effects of various interrogation tactics on an individual’s probability of signing a false confession. Approximately 80 percent of criminal cases are resolved by less than a full confession. A recent study by Blair (2005) on the success rate of present police interrogation techniques indicates “that police interrogations produce at least some incriminating information in between 45% and 64% of cases. In about a quarter of the cases, the suspect offers a full confession; however, we know very little about which tactics are likely to produce confessions. It also appears that confessions have a moderate impact on case processing. Specifically, those who give at least some incriminating information are

Roediger and McDermott’ (1995), experiment based on Deese’s (1959) experiment renewed the interest in false memories and invented the Deese-McDermott-Roediger Paradigm which many studies surround. Their study focused on eliciting false memories through receiving lists of words and being asked to recall those that were present from a separate list that included a critical word that if recalled, showed presence of false memory effects. Notably many participants were sure that the

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

Law and Human Behavior (2010) describes the three types of false confessions that are voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized (Kassin et al., 2010). Voluntary confessions are confessions of guilt by innocent people that are not a result of any external pressures. Voluntary false confessions can occur by a person’s desire for notoriety, a need of self-punishment, an inability to differ fact from fantasy, and the desire to protect the actual perpetrator (Kassin et al., 2010). Compliant confessions occur from pressure that is presented during the course of an interrogation. The source behind a compliant confession is the manipulation of their perception and decision-making by the police during interrogation so that they will eventually break and choose to not maintain innocence but rather confess because they are convinced it’s in their best interest (Kassin et al., 2010). Internalized confessions occur by a confession that is a result from psychological manipulation. During the interrogation process, the suspect will be presented false information of their involvement in the crime and be fed information, while their own memory of events is under constant attack. An internalized confession is produced by the

From what I found in my interview with Winters I can conclude that there needs to be patience with getting a solution. The track and field program would benefit the soccer program extremely well. Winters talked about how there is a plan in place to create a new soccer field that would just be a soccer field. If the college ended up deciding to go with a baseball and softball field, then there are no further plans for the soccer program, which is a down fall.

Memory facilitates necessary functions in daily life activities, but it is not a perfect mechanism in operation. Goldstein (2011) states that memory is, “…the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present” (p.116). There are many adaptive functions within the complexities of the human memory system and the interlinked constructs between each function leave room for doubt in the accuracy of recollection. Study of the human mind has opened avenues of discovery on the inner workings of our brains and the resulting knowledge suggests that humans are prone to creating false memories and even remembering things that never actually happened. A great deal of information has been written explaining the nature of memory errors and within the following pages a real-life case offers a glimpse into how recall distortions and memory errors can wield unpleasant consequences. Memory errors can be avoided with a significant effort, but the truth remains that no one is perfect and memories are subject to individual bias.