False Memories

Eye Witness Testimony and False Memories

By encoding information through sensory input, memories are then created. The information that has been encoded are then stored. People use retrieval to get the memory back (this would be the general memory process theory), but sometimes there can be problems such as false memories (Grison, S., Heatherton, T., & Gazzaniga, M. 2016). False memories can be difficult especially when it comes to any eye witnessing testimonies.

There were two studies done relating to false memories and eye witnessing through sensory information (one with images of mugshots and the other with auditory narrative context) two of the articles help confirm that false memory can occur to anyone and that it can happen.

In “Feelings of familiarity and false memory for specific associations resulting from mugshot exposure”, a testing was done based on falsely recognizing an event in which it involved an actor doing an action that had actually been carried out by someone else (Kersten, A., & Earles, J. 2017). The research that was performed was to test if people, specifically young adults, viewed a mugshot who were later asked questions pertaining to actions that a person may do, would cause them to have false recollection of the person in the mugshot performing that action (Kersten, A., & Earles, J. 2017).

Results from the test showed that people can falsely recognize a person’s actions that has actually been performed by someone else, when they were provided with information and asked questions after viewing a mugshot (Kersten, A., & Earles, J. 2017). The testing also showed results of participants who didn’t even see the mugshot and that were only informed the actions that a person carried out which concluded the same effect of false recollection (Kersten, A., & Earles, J. 2017). There are still questions, however, on why younger adults have a higher chance of having false recollection than older adults (Kersten, A., & Earles, J. 2017).

The next article, “An exploratory high-density EEG investigation of the misinformation effect: Attentional and recollective differences between true and false perceptual memories”, was on a study that used the misinformation effect paradigm to explore more on the difference in attentional and recollective processing with true and false event memories (Kiat, J. E., & Belli, R. F. 2017). In the study, there were nineteen participants who had misinformation paradigm and recognized with response to true and false events in a narrative context (they were later tested with an EEG a day after to investigate their memories) (Kiat, J. E., & Belli, R. F. 2017).

The findings of the study showed that the first recognition response to the true event memories has a connection with high levels of attentional and retrieval activity that are relating to false event memories (Kiat, J. E., & Belli, R. F. 2017). The significance of the study were the actual findings because it helped confirm and contribute to the understandings of the concept of false memories. The highlight of this would be the interaction of attention and retrieval processes in episodic memory recognition (memories that involve personal experiences from a particular time and place) (Kiat, J. E., & Belli, R. F. 2017).

Article 1 and Article 2 eye witness testimonies are in fact reliable because they were both done in 2017 (which is recent, so the information is still fresh) and contain strong evidence with data from their study and investigation. These studies were also set in a professional setting for the participants. Both provided a detailed theory, argument, discussion and conclusion with data to back it up. In the first article, it included that three of the participants were not included in the final results because the participants were guessing on what the purpose of the research was for (Kersten, A., & Earles, J. 2017). The articles were written by the researchers and clearly presented their findings. The researchers demonstrated a clear understanding of memory and how it works, which is vital for their investigation.

In conclusion, false memory does in fact occur and it can be very troublesome when a person does have one during an eye witnessing testimony. For example, presented in the first article, if someone has a false recollection of the wrong person doing an action it can greatly impact decisions made in court (Kersten, A., & Earles, J. 2017). The information-process theory has a component of working or short-term memory where the sensory input is transferred to working memory for a couple of seconds and can only store 5-9 chunks of information (Grison, S., Heatherton, T., & Gazzaniga, M. 2016). In the second article, the participants were given only a certain amount of time to “witness” the event, meaning that the information that they received could change or modify their memory the next day when they report what they witnessed (Kiat, J. E., & Belli, R. F. 2017). Both of the articles have the same findings that false memory can occur when someone is experiencing something from their senses.

References

Grison, S., Heatherton, T., & Gazzaniga, M. (2016). Psychology in your life (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Norton Publishing. ISBN-13: 9780393265156

Kersten, A., & Earles, J. (2017). Feelings of familiarity and false memory for specific associations resulting from mugshot exposure. Memory & Cognition, 45(1), 93–104.

Kiat, J. E., & Belli, R. F. (2017). An exploratory high-density EEG investigation of the misinformation effect: Attentional and recollective differences between true and false perceptual memories. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 1