Normal false memory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armin Schnider
Keyword(s):  
False Memory ◽  
Healthy Subjects ◽  
False Memories ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony

Is it possible to be completely convinced about a memory and yet to err? Yes, it is! Human memory is dynamic and at times falls victim to its own associative power. This chapter examines under what conditions healthy subjects may succumb to false memories and how children differ from adults in their susceptibility to false memory. It looks at how reliable apparently crystal-clear memories called flashbulb memories really are. Under certain conditions, it is even possible to implant entirely invented memories, a notion particularly pertinent in the realm of eyewitness testimony. Normal false memory appears to have different mechanisms than pathological confabulation.

scholarly journals Consequences of False Memories in Eyewitness Testimony: A Review and Implications for Chinese Legal Practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Jianqin Wang ◽  
Henry Otgaar ◽  
Tom Smeets ◽  
Mark L. Howe ◽  
Harald Merckelbach ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
False Memory ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Cognitive Interview ◽  
False Memories ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Misleading Information ◽  
Police Investigations ◽  
Wrong Direction ◽  
Legal Consequences

False memories can result in severe legal consequences including the imprisonment of innocent people. False memory in eyewitnesses is the largest factor contributing to miscarriages of justice in the United States. To date, no study has focused on how false memories might play a role in the Chinese legal system. The purpose of this review is to summarize the latest findings on false memory and eyewitness testimony in the literature, and to shed some light on how the Chinese legal system may incorporate these experiences into practice. Overall, false memories of eyewitnesses are generated either by external misleading information or by internal cognitive processes; false memories may guide police investigations in the wrong direction or cause eyewitnesses to misidentify an innocent person as the perpetrator. We conclude that specially designed interview protocols such as the Cognitive Interview, warnings given to eyewitnesses, and blind lineup administration may prevent or lower the risk of false memory occurrence.

scholarly journals False Memories in Native and Foreign Languages

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Dolgoarshinnaia ◽  
Beatriz Martin-Luengo
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Source Monitoring ◽  
False Memories ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Memory Errors ◽  
Monitoring Task ◽  
Memory Functioning ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Processing Information ◽  
Memory Monitoring

Human memory is prone to memory errors and distortion. Evidence from studies on cognitive functions in bilinguals indicates that they might be prone to different types of memory errors compared to monolinguals; however, the effect of language in false memories is still understudied. Source monitoring processes required for proper memory functioning, presumably, rely on inhibitory control, which is also heavily utilized by bilinguals. Moreover, it is suggested that thinking in a second language leads to more systematic and deliberate reasoning. All these results lead to expect that bilinguals are more analytical when processing information in their second language overcoming some memory errors depending on the language of information. To test this hypothesis, we run a classical misinformation experiment with an explicit source monitoring task with a sample of Russian–English bilinguals. The language of the misinformation presentation did not affect the degree of the misinformation effect between the Russian and English languages. Source monitoring demonstrated an overall higher accuracy for attributions to the English source over the Russian source. Furthermore, analysis on incorrect source attributions showed that when participants misattributed the sources of false information (English or Russian narrative), they favored the Russian source over the not presented condition. Taken together, these results imply that high proficiency in the second language does not affect misinformation and that information processing and memory monitoring in bilinguals can differ depending on the language of the information, which seems to lead to some memory errors and not others.

Eyewitness Testimony

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Loftus
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Repressed Memories ◽  
Witness Memory

This chapter describes the author’s studies of human memory and eyewitness testimony that drew her into a long involvement with the legal system. The history describes efforts on the part of lawyers and eyewitness scientists to introduce expert testimony about witness memory into legal cases. The author discusses the contamination of accurate memories due to misinformation after the fact, such as witnesses talking to one another or erroneous media, and the role of repressed memories in court cases. The chapter includes a brief description of the rocky path from early resistance to ultimate appreciation of the science and its usefulness in legal cases.

scholarly journals In Human Memory, Good Can Be Stronger Than Bad

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantine Sedikides ◽  
John J. Skowronski
Keyword(s):  
False Memory ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Negative Information ◽  
Negative Events ◽  
Regulatory Activity ◽  
Positive Information ◽  
Positive Events ◽  
Self Protection ◽  
Positive Content

Some researchers assert that the psychological impact of negative information is more powerful than that of positive information. This assertion is qualified in the domain of human memory, in which (a) positive content is often favored (in the strength of memories for real stimuli or events and in false-memory generation) over negative content and (b) the affect prompted by memories of positive events is more temporally persistent than the affect prompted by memories of negative events. We suggest that both of these phenomena reflect the actions of self-motives (i.e., self-protection and self-enhancement), which instigate self-regulatory activity and self-relevant processes.

scholarly journals Fuzzy-Trace Theory, False Memory, and the Law

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Brainerd ◽  
Valerie F. Reyna
Keyword(s):  
False Memory ◽  
False Memories ◽  
Child Witnesses ◽  
Trace Theory ◽  
Fuzzy Trace Theory ◽  
Rules Of Evidence ◽  
Scientific Principles ◽  
Simple Change ◽  
The Law ◽  
Eyewitness Identifications

Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) provides well-researched scientific principles that explain worrisome forms of false memory in the law. False memories are of great legal concern because memory reports are frequently the evidence that determines guilt/innocence and are sometimes the only evidence that crimes have been committed. FTT’s principles reveal errors in commonsense theories that jurors use to judge the credibility of witnesses’ memory reports. This science versus commonsense disconnect is salient in cases involving child witnesses, eyewitness identifications, and confessions. The consequences of this disconnect for justice could be ameliorated by a simple change in federal rules of evidence.

Retractors of false memories: The evolution of pseudo-memories

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold I. Lief ◽  
Janet Fetkewicz
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
False Memory ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Telephone Interview ◽  
Family Members ◽  
False Memories ◽  
False Memory Syndrome ◽  
Reality Testing ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Study Population

The formation of pseudomemories and the subsequent methods used by subjects to eventually distinguish between true and false memories are the primary foci of this study. A survey instrument was distributed to 100 “retractors” after an initial telephone interview with False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) staff. Forty respondents (40% of the subjects) who returned the questionnaire comprise our study population. The survey inquired about personal and family information, events surrounding the subject's accusations of sexual abuse, childhood history, and the subject's reflections on his or her experience. The process of the development of pseudomemories is highlighted. Subjects also described their feelings and experiences in open-ended questions, including their subjective experience as memories evolved, factors influencing thoughts, feelings and doubts, the process of questioning memories, the process of restoring relationships with family members, and uncertainties about views of memories currently held. We focus on the evolution of pseudomemories, especially the influence of the therapist; we explore the nature of therapy, one that makes an ill patient much worse and that eventually becomes so onerous that patients who still have some remaining reality-testing flee from therapy.

scholarly journals RE-EVALUATING THE CREDIBILITY OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY: THE MISINFORMATION EFFECT AND THE OVERCRITICAL JUROR

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-279
Author(s):  
Katherine Puddifoot
Keyword(s):  
Human Memory ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Misinformation Effect ◽  
False Information

ABSTRACTEyewitnesses are susceptible to recollecting that they experienced an event in a way that is consistent with false information provided to them after the event. The effect is commonly called the misinformation effect. Because jurors tend to find eyewitness testimony compelling and persuasive, it is argued that jurors are likely to give inappropriate credence to eyewitness testimony, judging it to be reliable when it is not. It is argued that jurors should be informed about psychological findings on the misinformation effect, to ensure that they lower the credence that they give to eyewitness testimony to reflect the unreliability of human memory that is demonstrated by the effect. Here I present a new argument, the overcritical juror argument, to support the conclusion that eyewitnesses are likely to make inappropriate credence assignments to eyewitness testimony. Whereas previously authors have argued that jurors will tend to give too much credence to eyewitness testimony, I identify circumstances in which jurors will give too little credence to some pieces of testimony. In my view jurors should be informed by psychological findings relating to the misinformation effect to ensure that they do not lower the credence that they give to eyewitness testimony when they should not.

False Memory in a Short-Term Memory Task

2007 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer H. Coane ◽  
Dawn M. McBride ◽  
Bascom A. Raulerson III ◽  
J. Scott Jordan
Keyword(s):  
False Memory ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
False Memories ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Latency Data ◽  
Single Probe

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995 ) paradigm reliably elicits false memories for critical nonpresented words in recognition tasks. The present studies used a Sternberg (1966) task with DRM lists to determine whether false memories occur in short-term memory tasks and to assess the contribution of latency data in the measurement of false memories. Subjects studied three, five, or seven items from DRM lists and responded to a single probe (studied or nonstudied). In both experiments, critical lures were falsely recognized more often than nonpresented weak associates. Latency data indicated that correct rejections of critical lures were slower than correct rejections of weakly related items at all set sizes. False alarms to critical lures were slower than hits to list items. Latency data can distinguish veridical and false memories in a short-term memory task. Results are discussed in terms of activation-monitoring models of false memory.

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