Eye Witness Memory

Gita on Memory

 क्रोधाद्भवति सम्मोहः सम्मोहात्स्मृतिविभ्रमः।

स्मृतिभ्रंशाद्बुद्धिनाशो बुद्धिनाशात्प्रणश्यति। 2.63।

Anger leads to clouding of judgment, which results in bewilderment of the memory. When the memory is bewildered, the intellect gets destroyed; and when the intellect is destroyed, the humanness is ruined.

 Meaning-cum-Explanation

The dynamic brain system that involves encoding [processing], storing and retrieval is commonly known as memory. Memory is just like clouds in the rainy season where they carry water (basic contents) with them and yet keep changing their shape. Similar is the case with memory. The dynamism leads to distortion (Stenberg and Stenberg, 2012). Schacter (2001) describes the memory distortions as sins.

Some of the sins are Transience, Absentmindedness, Blocking, Misattribution, Suggestibility, Bias and Suggestibility. In fact,        these distortions are sins in some kinds while boon in others. Memory of both personal and non-personal events is constructive. Constructive means what all has been said is not exactly what all that has been seen and heard rather it has more than that. The recall is influenced by several factors such as prior experiences, event related suggestions, post event information, perceptual factors etc. (Solso, 2006).

The memory is constantly updated and revised without the awareness of the individual. The distortion in memory occurs due to displacement of original information by the post event misleading information which makes it difficult to recall the original information. The original information is veiled by retroactive interference making it difficult for the individual to recall it.

Prior to the work of Elizabeth Loftus eyewitness memory (EM) was considered accurate and convincing evidence by the judicial system. In fact, it was considered as the critical piece of information. Most of the evidence (physical and biological) in courts of law are circumstantial, eyewitness identification evidence is direct evidence of guilt.

The EM has potential to decide the conviction, sentence and even execution. But her experiments showed that memory is fallible and prone to distortion, construction and reconstruction. It occurs due to:

(i)  Simple inference – The inferences about the event at the initial stage is found to significantly influence the subsequent recall.

(ii)  Stereotype – The information about the stereotyped group or individuals is stored under the influence of specific stereotypes which distorts the storage and recall of the information.

(iii)  Schema – The mental maps or assumptions about the outer environmental

stimuli. They are a kind of program of mind that occurs by virtue of experience. The entry of new information is likely to be influenced by these schemas leading to distortion in memory.

(iv)  Error in encoding during initial process.

(v)  The nature of stimuli (new, emotion provoking, bizarre stimuli attract the attention).

(vi) Prior knowledge, expectations, reconstructive and deductive processes.

 

Definition

          The recall of account of a crime or violence scene by an individual who had witnessed the event herself/himself is normally called as eyewitness memory.

 

Strategies to Handle the Information Distortion

(i)        The expression of a public statement about the original information prior to feeding of post event misinformation.

(ii)       Warning to the ‘witness’ about the incoming post-event misinformation prevents the distortion.

(iii)      If the nature of post-event misinformation seems to oppose the original information then also distortion can be minimized.

 

References:

Banaji, M. R., & Bhaskar, R. (1999). Implicit stereotypes and memory: The

bounded rationality of social beliefs. In D. L. Schachter & E. Scarry (Eds.) Memory, brain and belief. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Clifford, B. R., & Hollin, C. R. (1981). Effects of the type of incident and the

number of perpetrators on eyewitness memory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 66(3), 364–370. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.66.3.364.

Lahey, B. B. (2007). Psychology An introduction. McGraw Hill.

Pansky, A., & Nemets, E. (2012). Enhancing the quantity and accuracy of

eyewitness memory via initial memory testing. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 1(1), 2–10. doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2011.06.001

Shapira, A. A., & Pansky, A. (2019). Cognitive and metacognitive determinants of

eyewitness memory accuracy over time. Metacognition and Learning. doi:10.1007/s11409-019-09206-7

सिंह, ए. के. (2014). उच्चतर सामान्य मनोविज्ञान: मोतीलाल बनारसीदास    

 

 

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