Reconstructive memory

• Facial recognition has high reliability, as evidenced by the large sample size.
• In 2002, Loftus wrote an article on the case of a Washington DC sniper who killed a number of people.
• The police asked people to come forward with information on the murderer and many reported having seen a white van in the vicinity of the shootings.
• The sniper’s van was a blue Chevrolet Caprice.
• Loftus tried to find out where the myth of the white van came from.
• A bystander had mentioned a white van in an interview.
• After this, other people reported that they had seen a white van.
• Loftus supports Bartlett’s idea of memory as reconstructive.
• Loftus claims that the nature of questions asked by police or in a courtroom can influence witnesses’ memory.
• Leading questions - that is, questions that are suggestive in some way - and post-event information facilitate schema processing which may influence the accuracy of recall.
• Witnesses are often quite confident of what they remember even though their recollections don’t fit the actual facts.
• When witnesses try to retrieve a past event, they may unknowingly fill in the gaps with information based on other past experiences, stereotypes, or post-event information.
• Post-event information is any information that you are exposed to after you have witnessed something.
• This information can come in the form of television or social media reports - or from listening to other people tell their stories.
• When eyewitnesses' memories are distorted, it can have very damaging effects.
• One of the most famous cases of the effect of memory distortion on the life of an individual is the story of Ronald Cotton.
• Ronald Cotton was convicted of rape and imprisoned from 1984 to 1995 as a result of the eyewitness testimony given in court by Jennifer Thompson, the woman who claimed to be his victim.
• Ronald Cotton was released after 11 years in prison due to a DNA test that showed he could not have been the rapist.
• Jennifer Thompson got it wrong because of the influence of leading questions in the police investigation and the misinformation effect.
• The case of Ronald Cotton highlights the problem of leading questions in eyewitness testimony.
• In a second variation of the study, 150 students were randomly allocated to one of three conditions.
• Participants were asked only one of two questions: Either how fast the cars were going when they smashed or when they hit each other.
• Elisabeth Loftus carried out a series of studies that highlighted the problem of leading questions in eyewitness testimony.
• Loftus argues that when different verbs are used, they activate schemas that have a different sense of meaning.
• The participants were asked to come back a week later and without re-watching the video, they were asked one of the following questions: Did you see any broken glass? Yes or no?
• When watching a video of a car crash, one does not experience the emotions that one would experience when actually seeing a real car accident.
• The mean estimates of speed were highest in the ‘smashed’ condition (40.8 mph) and lowest in the ‘contacted’ group (31.8 mph).
• The researchers predicted that using the word ‘smashed’ would result in higher estimations of speed than using the word ‘hit’.
• There may also be a problem in using closed questions, where people have to answer yes or no.
• Nine participants were asked, “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" The critical word "hit’" was replaced by ‘collided’, ‘bumped,’ ‘smashed’ or’ contacted’ in the other conditions which each had nine participants answering the question.
• All of the participants were students, which means that the sample is biased.
• The situation is quite artificial which lowers its external validity.
• The independent variable was the different intensities of the verbs used in the critical question and the dependent variable was an estimation of speed.
• When the question is asked using smashed, the connotation of the verb influences how the memory is formed.
• The research also begs the question of how well people are able to estimate speed.
• The results were significant at p ≤ 0.005.
• These two studies were controlled laboratory experiments, so we should question whether there are problems with ecological validity.
• Leading questions are questions that either by the form or the content suggest to a witness which answer is desired.
• A third group, the control group, was not asked anything.
• Previous research has demonstrated that people’s memory of details after a car accident is inaccurate.