Three ways affect influences memory: 1. emotional events can create positive and negative influences on the memory of an individual. 2. memory itself can manipulate and/or create emotions of an individual. 3.
Working memory establish feelings as mental representations . Feelings influence thoughts, decisions, and actions which means impairment can also be caused because of a person's emotional state. Emotional distracters can disrupt the working memory causing decreased activity in the processing portions of the brain.
Short-term memory of identifier In the event of witnessing a crime happening quickly, one can be susceptible to being in a state of shock. Once the initial surprise wears off, an individual can be left wondering what exactly happened. The problem with witnesses trying to recall such specific information is that
short-term memory only keeps items in the brain for about 10 to 15 seconds. This means that if someone is not repeating everything they just witnessed over and over again to convert it over into their working or long-term memory, there is a good chance they can only remember the basic facts of the situation. Perceived or elapsed time can be altered during sudden or surprising events and influence eyewitness testimony.
Age of witness Among children, suggestibility can be very high.
Suggestibility is the term used when a witness accepts information after the actual event and incorporates it into the memory of the event itself. Children's developmental level (generally correlated with age) causes them to be more easily influenced by leading questions, misinformation, and other post-event details. Compared to older children, preschool-age children are more likely to fall victim to suggestions without the ability to focus solely on the facts of what happened. Research on childhood memory shows that false memories can appear very early in the remembering process. They do not only happen when someone forgets or is influenced by leading questions later on. Age makes a difference in how children handle this. Older children are often better at realizing when something they remember does not match what really took place. The process is called recollection rejection. It helps them tell apart real experiences from imagined ones. However, the younger children are more inclined to believe in the imagined details if it matches what they saw in terms of the general feeling it evokes. False impressions can start forming as children first take in and store information. When they focus on the main idea, or gist, they sometimes fill in missing parts in ways that seem to make sense. This can lead them to remember things that never actually happened. A review of developmental memory research found that this gist-based process appears in all age groups and can cause false recall even without misleading questions. These findings suggest that memory errors in children can arise naturally from how they process and understand events, not only from outside suggestion or later forgetting. In addition, a recent
meta-analysis found that older adults (over age 65) tend to be more susceptible to memory distortion brought about by misleading post-event information, compared to young adults.
Source monitoring Source monitoring refers to the hypothetical cognitive processes by which people identify the sources of their recollections. "Most of the time, source monitoring attributions are performed very rapidly and without phenomenal awareness of decision making. Sometimes, however, these rapid, nonreflective processes fail to identify one or more dimensions of source." Applied to an
eyewitness' memory of a crime, there are automatic consolidations taking place. There were events that occurred before and after the crime. They also have the influence of what others may have reported about the events of the crime. There are many things a witness might claim or believe to remember, but they may fail to recognize the source of that information. Reconsolidation is where reactivated memories enter a
transient state of instability in which they are prone to disruption or change. While memory reconsolidation is often thought to weaken memories, it is also involved in strengthening them, and in updating them with new information. Schacter and Loftus (2013) cited that "Reconsolidation may be a mechanism for updating memories with current information to keep them relevant. In so doing, however, this updating mechanism may also contribute to changes and distortions in memory over time as a consequence of memory reactivation."
Reconstructive memory Many of the early studies of memory demonstrated how memories can fail to be accurate records of experiences. Because jurors and judges do not have access to the original event, it is important to know whether a testimony is based on actual experience or not. Furthermore, emotional arousal can increase a witness’ confidence in their testimony. In moments of intense shock,
flashbulb memories can be formed. Flashbulb memories are a vivid memory of how a person learned about a shocking or surprising event. Still, these memories are highly susceptible to suggestion. A number of studies suggest that these potent memories are inaccurate. When rehearsing the memory post-encoding factors of retelling alter the memory over time. Because of this, the memory becomes inaccurate. Due to the intense emotional association with the memory, the witness’ insists that their memory is a fact. In a 1932 study,
Frederic Bartlett demonstrated how serial reproduction of a story distorted accuracy in recalling information. He told participants a complicated Native American story and had them repeat it over a series of intervals. With each repetition, the stories were altered. Even when participants recalled accurate information, they filled in gaps with information that would fit their personal experiences. His work showed
long-term memory to be adaptable. Bartlett viewed
schemas as a major cause of this occurrence. People attempt to place past events into existing representations of the world, making the memory more coherent. Instead of remembering precise details about commonplace occurrences, a schema is developed. A schema is a generalization formed mentally based on experience. The common use of these schemas suggests that memory is not an identical reproduction of experience, but a combination of actual events with already existing schemas. Bartlett summarized this issue, explaining In a study by Talarico and Rubin, it was found that although many had high confidence in their accuracy in recalling 9/11, these memories were not fully accurate. Although these memories were especially significant, participants recalled 9/11 flashbulb memories were no more accurate than mundane memories. Overall, the vividness of emotionally charged memories causes witness’ to have greater faith in their recollection despite being susceptible to forgetting over time. Further research of schemas shows memories that are inconsistent with a schema decay faster than those that match up with a schema. Tuckey and Brewer found pieces of information that were inconsistent with a typical robbery decayed much faster than those that were schema consistent over a 12-week period, unless the information stood out as being extremely unusual. The use of schemas has been shown to increase the accuracy of recall of schema-consistent information but this comes at the cost of decreased recall of schema-inconsistent information. Additional research has demonstrated that memory is not only influenced by schemas and emotions, but also by the way post-event information is introduced. In a classic study, Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed that participants' recollection of a car accident varied significantly depending on the phrasing of the questions they were asked. For example, participants who were asked how fast the cars were going when they "smashed" into each other estimated higher speeds than those asked when the cars "hit" each other. This phenomenon, known as the misinformation effect, highlights how suggestive questioning can distort memory. Supporting this, Tuckey and Brewer (2003) found that schema-consistent information is more likely to be retained over time, while inconsistent details tend to decay unless they are highly distinctive. These findings further emphasize the reconstructive nature of memory and the need for caution in how eyewitnesses are questioned. • Loftus conducted more experiments to prove the reliability of expert psychological testimony versus the accepted basic eyewitness testimony. It was found that jurors who hear about a violent crime are more likely to convict a defendant than of one from a nonviolent crime. To reduce this tendency for a juror to quickly accuse, and perhaps wrongly accuse, choosing to utilize expert psychological testimony causes the juror to critically appraise the eyewitness testimony, instead of quickly reaching a faulty verdict. • Also, it has been shown that intelligence and gender has a role in the ability of accurate memory recall. Participants were measured in eyewitness performance in two areas: 1) the ability to resist adding misinformation to the memory and 2) accuracy of recalling the incident and person. It showed that when a woman was recalling information about a woman, the resistance to false details was higher and the recall was more accurate. If a man was recalling an incident involving a man, similarly the recall was more accurate. However, when dealing with opposite genders, the participants gave into the suggestibility (misinformation) more easily and demonstrated less accuracy. • Facial recognition is a good indicator of how easily memories can be manipulated. In this specific experiment, if a misleading feature was presented, more than a third of the participants recalled that detail. With a specific detail, almost 70% of people claimed that it had been there, when it had not been present.
Weapons focus The
Weapon Focus Effect is one such factor. When a weapon is present during a crime, victims tend to be more focused on the weapon rather than the perpetrator’s features. In this way, eyewitness testimony is greatly affected by the intense fear present during an incident. The presence of a weapon impacts some details of the crime committed, such as what the assailant is wearing or other surrounding visual markers. The use of lineups shows its production isn't as impacted, with certain studies showing no effect, while others having less accuracy. The first controlled experiment on weapons focus (I) was conducted by Elizabeth Loftus. Participants were shown slides of individuals in a fast-food restaurant, either (c) handing a check to the cashier or (g) pointing a gun at the cashier. Following this, participants were given a short retention interval, after which they completed a questionnaire, and were then shown a fair-perpetrator 12-person lineup. In the first experiment, the participant's memory was slightly worse. In the second, the assailant was correctly identified slightly less often in the weapon condition. The questionnaire and line-up results of experiment II showed those in the g group with worse memory, compared to the control-conditioned group.
Systematic variables Type of questioning As early as 1900, psychologists like
Alfred Binet recorded how the phrasing of questioning during an investigation could alter witness response. Binet believed people were highly susceptible to suggestion, and called for a better approach to questioning witnesses. A prime example of this is in the initial questioning process conducted by authorities. As an official investigation launches, police ask many questions ranging from race to weight of the perpetrator. All the information collected can be used to pull photographs of prime suspects or lead to a line up. If police suggest their own opinions, whether verbal or non-verbal, it can encourage a witness to change their mind or lead to guessing. Studies conducted by Crombag (1996) discovered that in an incident involving a crew attempting to return to the airport but were unable to maintain flight and crashed into an 11-story apartment building. Though no cameras caught the moment of impact on film, many news stations covered the tragedy with footage taken after impact. Ten months after the event, the researchers interviewed people about the crash. According to theories about
flashbulb memory, the intense shock of the event should have made the memory of the event incredibly accurate. This same logic is often applied to those who witness a criminal act. To test this assumption, participants were asked questions that planted false information about the event. Fifty-five percent of subjects reported having watched the moment of impact on television and recalled the moment the plane broke out in flames-even though it was impossible for them to have seen either of these occurrences. One researcher remarked, "[V]ery critical sense would have made our subjects realize that the implanted information could not possibly be true. We are still at a loss as to why so few of them realized this." A survey of research on the matter confirm eyewitness testimony consistently changes over time and based on the type of questioning. The approach investigators and lawyers take in their questioning has repeatedly shown to alter eyewitness response. One study showed changing certain words and phrases resulted in an increase in overall estimations of witnesses. ==Improving eyewitness testimony==