Emotional memory/law from a cognitive neuroscience perspective Flashcards
In Yuille and Cutshall’s evaluation of eyewitness testimonies what was accuracy of the testimonies found to be like?
Descriptions were surprisingly detailed, containing info about people, actions and objects - overall accuracy was about 80% correct
Errors fairly infrequent and mainly related to descriptions of people, especially things like colour of hair and clothing and estimates of weight, height and age
Accuracy remained high for later research interviews, suggesting that information, against existing evidence, in such situations is retained fairly well over time
What is meant by regression towards the mean?
Extreme estimates of height and weight are avoided in preference to those that are more similar to average
So eyewitnesses commonly underestimate higher weights/heights and overestimate light/short targets
What can influence eyewitness decisions?
The context of a visual scene, and even the way interview questions are worded - Loftus and Palmer demonstrated that simply changing the verb used in questions about a road traffic accident changed the speed estimates witnesses gave and the likelihood of them “remembering” seeing broken glass in the scene
This is known as FRAMING QUESTIONS leading to false memories
What two types of variables affect reliability of eyewitness identification?
System variables - factors within control such as line-up procedures
Estimator variables - factors relating to the witness, perpetrator and event such as distance, lighting, stress etc
What must the new standard following State Vs Henderson do?
Allow court to explore all relevant system and estimator variables at a pre-trial hearing when evidence of suggestiveness
Cannot be weighted by factors that can be corrupted by suggestiveness
Must promote meaningful deterrence
Must help jurors understand and evaluate effects various factors have on memory
Must be flexible to guarantee fair trials
What kind of instructions can a judge give to the jury to help them understand considerations to make?
Acknowledgement that human memory is not simply a video recording
Problem many people have in identifying individuals of a different race
How stress can reduce eyewitness abilities to recall and make accurate identifications
How can long term memory be divided?
Explicit - Experiences/info have to consciously think about to remember, recall is intentional, otherwise called declarative memory
Implicit - knowledge remembered subconsciously and effortlessly, without awareness e.g. memory you use when riding a bike, also called procedural/non-declarative
What are 2 further sub-divisions of explicit memory?
Episodic - ability to remember episodes of own life
Semantic - Knowledge of facts, concepts, names etc
What are the 3 sub-divisions of implicit memory?
Procedural - for skills and motor movements
Conditioning - unconscious awareness of associations between stimuli, demonstrated in development of CR
Priming - exposure to one stimulus influences response to another on the basis of the previous experience, influences flow of thought non-consciously, often can’t recall the primer that has affected your action/decision
What is meant by physical trace and memory trace evidence in an attempt to reconstruct a past event for the purpose of determining what happened?
Physical trace - DNA evidence, when collected and analysed properly can help to identify many things including identity of perpetrator
Memory trace - trace of event left in brain of eyewitness, can be contaminated/lost/destroyed much as physical evidence can be, or otherwise made to produce results that can lead to incorrect reconstructions, manner of collection is again important
How is eyewitness evidence currently collected?
By non-specialists who have little/no training in human memory
Police protocols for collection, preservation and interpretation have not integrated memory research, which suggests that memories do change with time and are vulnerable to influence
Very different to the rigid and well-prescribed guidelines for collection of physical evidence
When does the misinformation effect occur?
When recall of episodic memory becomes less accurate because of post-event information - example of RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE where new information works backwards in time and distorts memory of the original event
What was Loftus and Coan’s study into false childhood memories?
The lost in the mall technique of implanting false memories - shows how we can even adopt rich false memories that are entirely invented
So external influences can result in the formation of a memory for an event that never even occurred
What was Garry et al’s study into imagination and memory in the context of the misinformation effect?
List of possible childhood events provided and participants indicated whether or not they had actually happened
Two weeks later they were asked to imagine some of these events, and then given the list again
Found that thinking about events via imagination can lead to false memories of them
What did Morgan et al demonstrate regarding misidentification of a person?
Stressful mock POW phase of survival school training
Misinformation introduced afterwards negatively affected memory for the details of the event e.g. presence of glasses or weapons, and also affected identification of an aggressive interrogater
In some conditions exposed to misleading photo and over half falsely identified a different individual as their interrogater after the interview
Illustrate that memories for stressful events (emotional memories) are highly vulnerable to modification by exposure to misinformation
