Question

Explain at least three processes or principles of memory that can contribute to the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony, or of memory in general. How can each of the processes you describe result in a false or flawed memory?

(For full credit I will expect to see a depth of knowledge about how memories are encoded and retrieved as well as an understanding of how errors can be introduced at various stages of memory.)

Answer 1

Misleading information are things which can make an eyewitness state a witness's statement inaccurate and there are couple of things, first is misleading information, This was conducted by Elizabeth Loftus and Palmer, here the participants were asked to watch a video and asked " how fast car was going when it hit the other car?", Five groups with different variations of the word 'hit'- contacted, bumped collided and smashed were given as answers and found mean speed for contacted 31.8 mph vs. smashed 40.5 mph.that suggested that question could have been a leading question that would change how participants recall the situation so what this shows is that human memory is maybe not accurate and there are things in the environment in the recall such as the way that questions are asked that can change how people remember and recall that information and this has big impact in courtroom in real life crime .

2. Post event discussion- when witnesses discuss the event with each otherit can contaminate their memories .They can combine information/misinformation meaning Eye witness testimony is less accurate. This could also occur when witnesses are interviewed.Gabbert et al. In 2003, participants put into pairs then asked to watch videos of the same ctime but ftom different angles. Then asked to discuss what they saw and then tested for recall.71% recalled things they could not have seen and so must have picked up from the discussion. When there was no discussion, this occurred 0% of the time. Hence, people agree with others to either win approval or as they think others are right.

3) Evaluation- Barun et. al. In2003, participants been to disney land as children 3 conditions, 1- shown real adverts;2- shown adverts with Ariel;3-shown adverts with bugs bunny. Found that participants given misleading information recalled false information.

All these helps to understand human memory and eyewitness testimony, there's lots of individual differences misleading information and post event are gonna affect different people in different amounts and different ways and age is also gonna have effect on the ability of people to recall information and particularly they've witnessed a crime