Eyewitness's Model Of Long Term Memory

Given these findings, it suggests that if an unfamiliar story can be re-told with significant changes by all those who participated in the study, a statement given by an eyewitness is subject to the same results (Leinfelt, 2004). Having considered Bartlett’s research in 1932, it is also reasonable to consider the criticism of Gauld and Stephenson (1967), as they discovered if the participants were told of the importance of accurate recall, the number of errors made in the re-telling was notably reduced. Arguably, real life cases and laboratory findings have shown that although eyewitnesses understand the importance of accuracy, recall is not without error (Tversky & Tuchin, 1989).

There are many different factors that play a part in the increased chance of a witness correctly identifying a suspect. Such factors should be brought to the attention of the jury and the judge to help in properly assessing whether a witness is correctly identifying a suspect. A study by Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja (2010) found that of the three different types of people: judge, jury, and general public, that for the most part all where fairly ill-informed on the reliability of eyewitness testimony with judges having the most. Judges only had about an 8% difference in knowledge when compared to jurors. With this information it is very clear that education on the reliability of eyewitness testimony needs to become more of a general knowledge information for the everyone, especially people who are involved in upholding the law. Another factor to look into when evaluating the accuracy eyewitness testimony is the role that memory plays. Memory is divided into three processes: perceiving, remembering, and recalling information (Simmonsen, 2013). There is plenty of room in all three of those stages to forget or falsely remember something. Some factors that play a part when a person perceives an event is the amount of time they are exposed to the event and the suspect. A study conducted by Horry, Halford, Brewer, Milne, & Bull. (2014) found that witnesses were increasingly more likely to correctly identify a suspect if they had been exposed to the suspect for sixty

Outline and evaluate research in to the duration, capacity and encoding information in short term memory.

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

The reviewed article is about a study in which children of two different age groups, and a group of adults were asked general-to-specific questions and misleading questions in an interview to see if the timing of the misleading questions and temperament affected the quality of the witness’s testimony. The researchers hypothesized that the use of misleading questions by interviewer’s causes the witness to unwittingly incorporate false information into their testimony.

The impact of eyewitness testimony upon the members of a jury has been the subject of various research projects and has guided the policies formed by the federal government regarding its competent use in criminal matters (Wells, Malpass, Lindsay, Fisher, Turtle, & Fulero, 2000). Therefore, eyewitness studies are important to understand how

This is because research has proven that memory is malleable. The impression that memory is always accurate and is resistant to bias is an “unfortunate misunderstanding of memory” (Lacy and Stark 2) which results in steep consequences in court. Fallibilities in eyewitness testimonies, caused by memory distortions, allow for many wrongful convictions of the criminal and therefore ruin innocent people’s lives while allowing the real felon to roam

Although eyewitness testimony can be significant when displaying it to a judge or a jury, years of supportive social science research has sustained that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. As the Innocence Project website illustrates, studies show that the human mind is nowhere near like a ‘tape recorder’ and we as humans do not record events exactly as we see them. Instead, witness recollection is just like any other evidence at a crime scene and must be preserved carefully and sensibly retrieved or it can be considered as contaminated.

A defendant’s guilt is often determined in a single moment of fleeting emotion. A pointed finger, accompanied by the solidifying eyewitness statement “He’s the one!” is enough for a jury to make its final decision in a court case. Although it is understandable, when faced opposite of the individual creating the accusation, to place one’s belief in the accusation made, the credibility of the eyewitness’s account of events are rarely taken into consideration. Psychologists have taken part in research that recognizes the unreliable nature of eyewitness statements used to determine guilt because of the instability of long term memory acquisition and because of this, eyewitness accounts of situations should not be used before a jury in court.

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.

Information is the lifeblood of a criminal investigation. The ability of investigators to obtain useful and accurate information from eyewitnesses of crimes is crucial to effective law enforcement, yet full and accurate recall is difficult to achieve (Stewart, 1985). Such elicitation of complete and accurate recall from people is important in many aspects of life; specifically, eyewitness recall may determine whether a case is solved. Principle advocates of the cognitive interview (Fisher, Geiselman, Holland & MacKinnon,

Is our justice system fair? Is our justice system truly set out to do what it was meant to do? Or are there social factors and memory errors that come into play that can change a conviction outcome. In today’s court rooms we have, Defense attorneys, Prosecutors, judges, juries, evidence, forensics experts, witness testimonies, and of course the human memory. What better type of evidence than the human memory, right? Unfortunately, human memory is subject to the power of suggestion and unable to truly recall an event when told to recall. In other words, the story may not be the same as the one that actually happened the day of that event because many variables come into play like cross examinations and the way a question can be asked can alter the answer or how the event was perceived. The main focus of this paper is to see how the human brain is not able to effectively recall events which could possibly convict an innocent person of wrong doing. Also how lawyers use the misinformation effect to their advantage. In order to understand how something as simple as a question can decide a person’s faith we must first answer some questions. First, How does memory actually work and how is memory retrieved when your need to answer a question or being cross examined? Second, how does the misinformation effect play a role when a witness needs to testify against the defense or vice versa? Third, how can structuring a word or sentence effect the outcome of a conviction?

Hermann Ebbinghaus was a psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory. Ebbinghaus was famous for the discovery of ‘the forgetting curve’ and ‘the spacing effect’. Ebbinghaus was as well the first person to describe the learning curve. As for what Ebbinghaus demonstrated from his research was he randomly selected a sample of syllables, practiced them, and tested himself. He would get his experiments, rapidly read them aloud, eight times over, then look away and try to remember the list; by doing this he also realized that those who learn quickly also forget quickly.

Eyewitness misidentification can pose a serious threat in forensic evidence. Eye witness testimony can easily be tampered with due to words or phrases used. Bias is a major issue in identification especially if the police officer uses suggestive tones to portray whom they believe is the suspect. Some witnesses will change their opinion when they hear new information of the suspect. A study has shown that words can play a major impact in the witness' mind and cause them to recall false information. False information can also stem from human memory, age, distance, and how long it took before a witness could recall the information. It has been shown that due to the confidence that a witness may have, it could impact the court systems' reliability on the witness; however, there are several solutions that can be done to prevent misidentification in the court of law. Some examples that can be done are blind administration, lineup composition, instructions, confidence statements, and

Memory is the process in our brain that the results of learning are stored for future recall. There are three types of memory, sensory memory, short term memory, and long term memory. The human memory processing system is comprised of an input or encoding stage, a storage process, and a retrieval process, the human memory also tends to forget quite a bit of information. Psychologists have many general principles to help us improve our memory and learning how the memory works will enable us to develop new ways to increase memory recall. One of the most significant models of memory was the Shiffrin model, also known as the Modal Model, which was the work of Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968