Preview

What Is Reconstructive Memory?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
132 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Is Reconstructive Memory?
Many memory concepts of memory have been subject of much debate in our legal system, in particular the constructive and reconstructive properties of human memory. So what is reconstructive memory? This concept refers to schema-guided alter and distort encoded memory images. One of the issues that have been widely researched is the reliability of eyewitness’ testimony. Results from studies conducted in labs have shown that selective encoding, deceptive questions done by interrogators, and implementation of memories through hypnosis or therapies can distort memory recall. Moreover, there is still great debate over whether harrowing events, such as sexual abuse, can cause amnesia for an event that can be later on recovered. Occasionally, this
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Dangers Of Source Confusion During Eyewitness Testimonies
    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Dangers Of Source Confusion During Eyewitness Testimonies

    Steve Titus’s circumstances illustrates the dangers of source confusion during eyewitness testimonies. Source confusion occurs when the context and details of a stimulus are misremembered or confused with another stimulus, which may only appear familiar. In this case, Titus resembled a rapist who was wanted, as well as his car was similar to the rapist’s car. When Titus was shown in a lineup, he was picked out as the offender. This situation shows that people are capable of having no source memory, but can still have a sense of familiarity.…

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Larry Mayes Memories Of Thing's Unseen
    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Larry Mayes Memories Of Thing's Unseen

    Faulty memory has a lot of negative effects, but most importantly it has led to at least a hundred people being wrongly imprisoned. For example, Larry Mayes was convicted of raping a gas station cashier after the victim positively identified him in court. Mayes spent twenty one years in prison after attorney Thomas Vanes wrongfully prosecuted him of the crime. It was only two decades after prosecuting Mayes that Vanes saw the result of old evidence being subjected to new DNA testing, and he changed his mind. In a newspaper, Vanes wrote, “he was right, I was wrong” (Loftus). Faulty memory can change a person’s life forever and it is just one of the reasons why the study of memory is so important (Loftus).…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Creating False Memories Summary
    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Creating False Memories Summary

    In “The Argument for the Reality of Delayed Recall of Trauma” Richard Kluft suggests that repressed memory’s are held accountable. He provides sufficient evidence that this is in fact an arguable account.…

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Picking Cotton
    • 1915 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Picking Cotton

    In the case of Jennifer Thompson, she prepared for the fight and was determined not to be murdered by her rapist. As she cleared her mind, Jennifer tried to memorize every facial feature or distinct markings on her rapist. She wanted to make sure she encoded everything she was seeing and hearing from her assailant, but what happens when other factors alter your memories. Things such as unconscious transference, weapon focus, cross race bias or how the eye witness was questioned can play a big factor on how memories are recalled from the eye witness. These factors played a big role in Ronald Cotton’s sentencing and cost him 11 agonizing years in prison. Many believe that once we encode something in our minds it is there for ever and there is nothing that can alter or change our memory of the event, but we are wrong. Like in the case of Jennifer Thompson, she was so positive that Ronald Cotton was her assailant, she had identified him in a photo line up after describing him to a Forensic Sketch artist, and again identified him in a line up. During these two occasions, the officer’s in the case gave Jennifer assured her that she was doing great. This gave Jennifer more reassurance and confidence that she had chosen the right man, but she had not. Previous studies on post identification feedback show that “witnesses who received confirming feedback (versus no feedback) as having paid more attention, having had a better view, being better able to identify strangers, and being more confident at the time of the identification.” (Douglass et. al., 2010, p. 287). Thus Jennifer’s second and third time around identifying Ronald Cotton as her rapist…

    • 1915 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    How Do Bystanders Use Eyewitnesses To Proven Guilty?
    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages

    How Do Bystanders Use Eyewitnesses To Proven Guilty?

    As time passes, people tend to forget details and certain events. Even those events that were originally crystal clear, will naturally fade with time. Also, a person’s bias – how he or she views what happened based on past experiences and upbringing, will affect how the person will relay what occurred. Even if the person is only stating facts, the bias will be present in the testimony. Finally, when a traumatic event occurs, a person’s senses are heightened, their adrenaline starts pumping and hence, the brain then naturally, does not commit everything to memory – because it is concentrating on the traumatic event and the testimony will be lacking.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Memory And Eyewitness Testimony
    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Memory And Eyewitness Testimony

    Memory and Eyewitness Testimony are two concepts which are studied within the topic of cognitive psychology. It is important to investigate these processes to aid in the understanding of how individuals cognitively process ideas and how this may affect specific behaviors. From a psychological perspective, memory can be defined as, “The capacity to retain and store information” (holah.co.uk, 2006). The further researches into the topic of memory allow it to greatly contribute toward societies' legal system, specifically in the sense of Eyewitness Testimony. Individuals may feel confident towards their memory abilities but according to many researchers, one's memory is not always reliable. (Bartlett, 1932) believed that memory is unreliable due…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    What Are Some Factors Do You Think Might Contribute To The Development Of False Memories
    • 1445 Words
    • 6 Pages

    What Are Some Factors Do You Think Might Contribute To The Development Of False Memories

    1. “Watch the following video (link provided in Chapter 8 Resources): The Fiction of Memory. How does this video change the way you view memory? Do you think it is possible for people to have memories that are not real or faulty? Discuss some factors do you think might contribute to the development of false memories, and explain how you think eyewitness testimony should be handled in the courtroom.”…

    • 1445 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    False Memories: Cognitive Psychology
    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages

    False Memories: Cognitive Psychology

    An accepted presumption of memory is that every little thing is stored, that given the right recovery prompt or method, a memory will be "unlocked" and will relayed accurately (Robinson-Riegler &Robinson-Riegler, 2012). When an individual want to know something that happened in their past they should request that they are cognitively questioned by their psychotherapist. A cognitive questioning means that there cannot be any questions that are leading and that the individual is as comfortable as possible prior to being questioned. The technique is to not jump to conclusions and produce your own scenarios within your mind about what could have taken place, but additionally about what you do recollect the events that surround the incident that took place. "Deceptive information presented after an event can lead people to erroneous reports of that misinformation. Different process histories can be responsible for the same erroneous accounts in different individuals" (Loftus & Hoffman, 1989). There have individuals have gone through with hypnosis and have been on rigorous medication regimens because they are afraid of the affects of what they will do on their memory. When an individual has a good relationship with other people that they grow up with or if the people watched the individual watched grow up can help keep the memories stay alive. The problem with this is that the person has to whole heartedly trust the people to remember the accuracy, which sometimes can be tricky. "Misleading information presentation after an event can lead people to erroneous reports of that misinformation. Different process histories can be responsible for the same erroneous report in different people" (Loftus & Hoffman,…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Traumatic Experience Repressed Memories Essay
    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Traumatic Experience Repressed Memories Essay

    B. Minor Point 2: Individuals who suffer from sexual abuse sometimes develop false memories that can affect their daily lives (Schacter, 2001).…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Eyewitness Evidence Essay
    • 2182 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Eyewitness Evidence Essay

    Geiselman, R. & Fisher, R. (1985) ‘Eyewitness Memory Enhancement in the Police Interview: Cognitive Retrieval Mnemonics Versus Hypnosis’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.70,No.2,pp.401-412…

    • 2182 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Repressed Memories
    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Repressed Memories

    Back in the 1990’s, it was common for prosecutions to be based on recovery of repressed childhood memories, usually reclaimed through therapy. Now, in later decades the number of these cases have decelerated, as it is unclear whether these memories can be considered reliable. This report is based on the story of the Whitfield’s, and how repressed memories of abuse have affected the members of their family.…

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Best Essays

    False Memory Paper
    • 1823 Words
    • 8 Pages

    False Memory Paper

    One of the more fascinating phenomena in Psychology has been the false memory syndrome. False memories gained notoriety in 1960s America, when record levels of therapy patients reported that they had been sexually abused by family members, but were only able to recover these previously suppressed and unrecognized memories of said abuses while in therapy. This led many psychological researchers to conclude that particular psychodynamic practices used by therapists were more than likely the source of these false memories. To support these claims, researchers went on to demonstrate that false memories could be induced in participants using complex paradigms such as paragraphs or simple word list paradigms, as all memory at its…

    • 1823 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    False Memory
    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages

    False Memory

    Memory is fallible and malleable that can be changed and created a new experience or information. This fabricated or distorted remembering of an event is called a false memory, however, never occurred in reality. Inaccurate information and erroneous attribution sources of an original information causes to recollect entirely false events. Also, the false memory can have profound implications that vivid and lively recollection of memory may reconstruct new memory. In addition, it can be created by poor understanding of the false memory that lead to terrible miscarriages of justice in legal system. The purpose of this research is to explore the effect of the false memory and the possibilities of its formation.…

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Repressed Memories Essay
    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Repressed Memories Essay

    Repressed memories have long been one of the most highly debated topics in psychology. Repressed memories are said to be a defense mechanism for forgetting, or disassociating from, extremely traumatic events. However, an overwhelming amount of research suggests that traumatic events are much more likely to stick to memory because they are extremely emotional. It is important to understand the reality of repressed memories because the perpetuation of these memories can have extreme personal, legal, and moral implications. Despite popular belief and anecdotal cases, there is no support in cognitive research for the existence of repressed memories.…

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Describe the Type of Memory Loss
    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Describe the Type of Memory Loss

    Memory problems are usually the most obvious symptom in people with dementia. For example, a person with early stages of dementia might go to the shops and then cannot remember what they wanted. It is also common to misplace objects. As dementia progresses, sometimes memory loss for recent events is severe and the person may appear to be living in the past. They may think of themselves as young and not recognise their true age.…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics