8.3-8.4

• Amnesia


  The loss of long-term memory that occurs as the result of disease, physical trauma, or psychological trauma
• Anterograde amnesia


  • Caused by brain trauma, cannot remember new information, can remember information and events prior to injury, hippocampus usually affected
• Retrograde amnesia


  • Loss of memory for events that occurred prior to the trauma, difficulty remembering episodic memories
• Memory construction


  The formulation of new memories
• Memory reconstruction


  The process of bringing up old memories
• As we retrieve our memories, we also tend to alter and modify them
• Suggestibility


  The effects of misinformation from external sources that leads to the creation of false memories
• Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions
• Even though memory and the process of reconstruction can be fragile, police officers, prosecutors, and the courts often rely on eyewitness identification and testimony in the prosecution of criminals
• Faulty eyewitness identification and testimony can lead to wrongful convictions
• The Innocence Project discovered that eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions
• How eyewitness misidentification happens

  1. Jennifer Thompson tries to memorize rapist's face

  2. Police show her photos, she identifies Ronald Cotton

  3. She becomes certain he is the rapist

  4. Cotton is convicted and imprisoned

  5. DNA evidence later exonerates Cotton
• Unintended cues and suggestions by police officers can lead witnesses to identify the wrong suspect
• Memory-enhancing strategies


  • Rehearsal - conscious repetition of information to be remembered
  • Chunking - organizing information into manageable bits or chunks
  • Elaborative rehearsal - thinking about the meaning of new information and its relation to knowledge already stored in memory
  • Mnemonic devices - memory aids that help organize information for encoding
• After Cotton was convicted, he was able to get a new trial where Jennifer Thompson again testified against him
• After serving 11 years in prison, DNA evidence finally demonstrated that Ronald Cotton did not commit the rape, was innocent, and had served over a decade in prison for a crime he did not commit
• Mnemonic device


  • Mr. VEM J. SUN - to remember the order of planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
• Mnemonic device


  • Knuckle mnemonic - to remember the number of days in each month
• Ronald Cotton's story is not unique, there are also people who were convicted and placed on death row, who were later exonerated
• Mnemonic device


  • Relating a name to something memorable - e.g. remembering the name "Carl" by associating it with the Grateful Dead t-shirt he was wearing
• The Innocence Project is a non-profit group that works to exonerate falsely convicted people, including those convicted by eyewitness testimony
• The more vivid or unusual the mnemonic, the easier it is to remember</b>
• In the Elizabeth Smart case, the police and FBI proceeded with caution with Mary Katherine, the sole eyewitness, and did not want to implant any false memories or mislead her in any way
• Expressive writing helps boost short-term memory, particularly if writing about a traumatic experience
• After about 4 months, Mary Katherine was able to name the abductor, and the suspect was caught and Elizabeth Smart was returned to her family
• Saying words aloud is a strategy used to improve memory
• Misinformation effect


  After exposure to additional and possibly inaccurate information, a person may misremember the original event
• Loftus and Palmer's experiment on the misinformation effect

  1. Participants shown films of car accidents

  2. Asked to estimate speed using different verbs

  3. Participants who heard "smashed" estimated higher speeds

  4. Participants in "smashed" group more likely to falsely remember seeing broken glass
• Wrubel & Spiller, 2010: 'The more vivid or unusual the mnemonic, the easier it is to remember'
• Recall of false autobiographical memories is called false memory syndrome
• Mnemonic


  A strategy that helps improve memory
• The key to using any mnemonic successfully is to find a strategy that works for you
• Perspectives on repressed and recovered memories

  • Those who have recovered memories of childhood abuse argue that repressed memories can be locked away for decades and later recalled
  • Loftus challenges the idea that individuals can repress memories of traumatic events and then recover them years later through therapeutic techniques
• Expressive writing helps boost your short-term memory, particularly if you write about a traumatic experience in your life
• Researchers have found that even young children can be led to falsely recall events, like pointing to genital/anal areas on dolls even when no exam occurred
• Saying a word out loud improves your memory for the word because it increases the word's distinctiveness
• Steps have been taken to decrease suggestibility of witnesses, like using neutral and less leading language, and blind photo lineups
• Elaborative rehearsal


  Processing information more deeply and linking it to other information and memories to make it more meaningful
• Encoding failure


  Memory loss happens before the actual memory process begins, when information is never stored in memory in the first place
• Self-reference effect


  Making the material you are trying to memorize personally meaningful to you