>> Yes, Rebus had a vague memory. A memory of his mother, holding him on
>> her knee, or maybe it was his father, singing him songs and bouncing
>> the knee in time. It had never happened that way, but he had a memory
>> of it all the same.
>> - Ian Rankin, Tooth and Nail
>> End quote.
1. Human memory does not operate as if it were a videotape camera. We
do not simply record some event in our memory and then later retreive
an unblemished recollection of what happened.
2. Human memory is much more fragile, suggestible, and prone to
distortion and decay than we typically realize. As a result, mistaken
eyewitness testimony rarely involves outright lies; instead, it
usually corresponds to commonly occurring distortions in memory
functioning.
3. Memory consists of three stages: (1) storage, (2) retention, and
(3) recall. Storage factors can impede memory accuracy when we find
ourselves unable to recall information from our memory because it was
never stored there. For instance, can you recall which way Lincoln
faces on a penny, and where the letter identifying the mint of the
penny is located?
4. The penny example demonstrates that when we experience some event,
our brain makes an instaneous decision whether to store information
related to that event - or simply disregard it. The decision to store
or disregard corresponds to how we evaluate the event - something
worth remembering or merely a trivial circumstance?
5. The influences of the retention stage can corrode memory via three
factors: (1) passage of time, (2) frequency and length of exposure,
and (3) new information. Surprisingly enough, memory not only fades
away with the passage of time - it also grows and expands.
6. What fades from memory over time is the actual experience of an
event. Consequently, each time we recall some event we must
reconstruct it - asking ourselves what happened and how it transpired
- and with each reconstruction our memory can change. Therefore memory
recall, or the reconstruction of some event, responds primarily to our
sense of what is plausible. We actually recall bits and pieces of
information and fill in the gaps with inferences or "educated
guesses."
7. Our memory for faces can persist for years. For example, we might
return to our high school reunion and recognize numerous faces and
remember many names. Nevertheless, we must consider how we were
repeatedly exposed to those faces for as long as four years. Under
conditions of brief, one-time exposure, our memory for faces rapidly
declines. The question of how accurately we can remember a face
ultimately involves how many associative links exist with that face?
Very few links exist after a brief, one-time exposure; but many links
develop over a period of four years. When exposed only briefly to some
event an accurate recall of that event after three to four weeks is
unlikely.
8. After witnessing an event, we are sometimes exposed to new
information that can actually change our memory. What is known as the
"post-event information effect" often transpires as a result of our
dialogues with other people. For example, an eye-witness to some event
frequently discusses with others what they saw. In the aftermath of
some event, the eyewitness and others may speculate as to exactly what
happened, the sequence in which it occured, and the degree to which
various participants were involved. Rather than facilitate
reproductive memory - the accurate reproduction of some past event, an
eyewitness' dialogues with other people create reconstructive memory -
a reconstruction of the past which may be quite inaccurate because it
responds more to considerations of plausibility than fact. Therefore,
people can reconstruct inaccurate memories after witnessing some event
as a result of discussing that event with other people.
9. Because of how fragile and suggestible memory is, line-up
procedures can result in tragic errors. In particular, simultaneous
line-ups - a witness views the suspect along 3-5 other individuals at
the same time - are inappropriate. Simultaneous line-ups lead
witnesses into making relative identifications - relative to each
other, which of these individuals most looks like the suspect?
10. Sequential line-ups - the witness views each person in the line-
up one individual at a time - are the appropriate procedure.
Sequential line-ups lead witnesses into making more absolute
identifications - does this person look like the suspect? As a result,
sequential line-ups significantly reduce the number of false positive
identifications compared to simultaneous line-ups.
http://www.campsych.com/eyewitness.htm
----------------------------------------------
Re-constructive Memory
Our memory plays an important role in all our social interactions.
Because of this, it is vital to grasp this one thing about memory:
Human memory is re-constructive in nature. By this I mean that we
cannot tap into a literal translation of past events. It is not like
playing back a tape recorder or a VCR; instead, we re-create our
memories from bits and pieces of actual events filtered through and
modified by our notions of what might have been and what should have
been. Our memories are also profoundly influenced by what people might
have told us about the specific events— long after they occurred. As
Anthony Greenwald has noted, if historians revised and distorted
history to the same extent that we do in trying to recall events from
our own lives, they'd lose their jobs! Of course, most of us would
like to believe that our memories contain only the truth about the
past. To most people, the idea that their memory is fallible is
somewhat frightening. But consider how frightening it was to Timothy
Hennis, who almost lost his life because the members of his jury
believed that memory is infallible.
Let me explain. On July 4,1986, Hennis was convicted of the triple
murder of Kathryn, Kara, and Erin Eastburn and the rape of Kathryn
Eastburn. The crime was a particularly grisly one. Apparently, an
intruder had broken into the Eastburn home, held a knife to Kathryn
Eastburn, raped her, and then slit her throat and stabbed her 15
times. Three-year-old Erin and 5-year-old Kara were each stabbed
almost a dozen times. The police followed a quick lead. Earlier in the
week, Timothy Hennis had answered the Eastburns' newspaper ad
requesting someone to adopt their black Labrador retriever. Hennis had
taken the dog on a trial basis.
During the trial, two eyewitnesses placed Hennis at the scene of the
crime. Chuck Barrett testified that he had seen Timothy Hennis walking
in the area at 3:30 A.M. on the morning of the murders. Sandra Barnes
testified that she had seen a man who looked like Hennis using a bank
card that police had identified earlier as one stolen from the
Eastburn residence. But Hennis had an airtight alibi for his
whereabouts on the night of the murder. Moreover, there was no
physical evidence (fingerprints, clothing fibers, footprints,
bloodstains, hair) to link him to the scene. Nevertheless, the jury
found the eyewitness testimony convincing and convicted Hennis—
sentencing him to death by lethal injection.
Hennis spent 845 days awaiting his execution on death row before a
judge from the court of appeals ordered a new trial on the basis of a
procedural technicality unrelated to the eyewitness testimony.
Hennis's lawyers knew that if Hennis had any chance of overturning his
conviction, they would need to attack the eyewitness testimony placing
him at the scene of the crime. On close scrutiny, it turned out to be
very weak evidence. Chuck Barrett had originally told police 2 days
after the murders that the man he saw had brown hair (Hennis is blond)
and was 6 feet tall (Hennis is much taller). Furthermore, when asked
to identify Hennis in a photo lineup, Barrett was uncertain of his
judgment. When Sandra Barnes was first contacted by police a few weeks
after the crime, she told them firmly and emphatically that she had
not seen anyone at the bank machine that day. Why then at the trial
had both of these witnesses so confidently placed Hennis at the scene
of the crime? Were they both liars? No, they were just ordinary people
like you and I; their memory of the events had been leveled and
sharpened—constructed, shaped, and re-constructed—by over a year of
questioning by police and lawyers.
Elizabeth Loftus, a gifted cognitive psychologist, served as an expert
witness at the second Hennis trial. Loftus had previously conducted a
fascinating program of research on re-constructive memory—
investigating how such "suggestive" questioning can influence memory
and subsequent eyewitness testimony. In one of her experiments, Loftus
showed subjects a film depicting a multiple-car accident. After the
film, some of the subjects were asked, "About how fast were the cars
going when they smashed into each other?" Other subjects were asked
the same question, but the word smashed was replaced by the word hit.
Subjects who were asked about smashing cars, as opposed to hitting
cars, estimated that the cars were going significantly faster;
moreover, a week after seeing the film, they were more likely to state
(erroneously) that there was broken glass at the accident scene.
Leading questions can not only influence the judgment of facts (as in
the case above), but also can affect the memory of what has happened.
In one of her early studies, Loftus showed subjects a series of slides
depicting an auto-pedestrian accident. In a critical slide, a green
car drove past the accident. Immediately after viewing the slides,
half of the subjects were asked, "Did the blue car that drove past the
accident have a ski rack on the roof ?" The remaining subjects were
asked this same question but with the word blue deleted. Those
subjects who were asked about the "blue" car were more likely to claim
incorrectly that they had seen a blue car. A simple question had
changed their memory.
In her testimony at Hennis's second trial, Loftus discussed the nature
of re-constructive memory and the way that an interrogation can lead
an observer to construct an imaginary scenario and then believe that
it really happened. Consider the earlier testimony of Sandra Barnes.
At first, she could not recall the presence of anyone at the bank
teller machine. However, after listening to months of television
coverage and reading a year's worth of newspaper stories about the
crime, coupled with the pressure stemming from the fact that she was
the only one who might have seen the real murderer, Barnes re-
constructed a memory of her visit to the bank machine that included
someone who looked like Hennis—in a manner similar to the way the
students recalled a blue rather than a green car in the Loftus
experiment. By rehearsing this new construction repeatedly for lawyers
and judges, Barnes came to accept it as fact. It is important to note
that Sandra Barnes was not intentionally lying. She was simply re-
constructing the event. She came to believe what she was saying. Chuck
Barrett's testimony was tainted in much the same way. Subsequently,
the man he saw the morning of the murder was conclusively identified
as another man on his way to work—not Hennis.
Fortunately for Hennis, his story did not end on death row. On April
20,1989, a second jury declared Timothy Hennis to be innocent of the
crimes, noting that there was no physical evidence linking him to the
scene and that the eyewitness testimony was weak. In the first trial,
Hennis had been victimized by mistaken identification coupled with the
jury's implicit assumption that memory is perfectly accurate.
Although the case remains unsolved, off the record, the local police
have indicated that they now have good reason to believe that the
crimes were actually committed by another person: A strikingly similar
rape and murder were committed in a neighboring town while Hennis was
on death row. Shortly after these crimes, both Hennis and the police
received a convincing series of anonymous letters thanking Hennis for
taking the rap for the East-burn murders.
Autobiographical Memory
It is clear that memory can be re-constructive when it involves quick,
snapshot-like events such as trying to recall the details of an
automobile accident. But what about something more enduring, such as
the recall of our own personal history? Here again, it's important to
realize that we don't remember our past as accurately as we would like
to believe. It is simply not possible to remember everything that has
ever happened in our lives. Serious revisions and important
distortions occur over time. As you might imagine, these revisions of
autobiographical memory are not random. Rather, we have a strong
tendency to organize our personal history in terms of what Hazel
Markus referred to as self-schemas—coherent memories, feelings, and
beliefs about ourselves that hang together and form an integrated
whole. Thus, our memories get distorted in such a way that they fit
the general picture we have of ourselves. For example, if we have a
general picture of our childhood as having been unhappy, and our
parents as having been cold and distant, any events from our childhood
that violate that general picture will be more difficult to recall
than events that support it. Thus, over the years, our memories become
increasingly coherent and less accurate. In this manner, to a certain
extent, we rewrite our personal histories. It isn't that we are lying
about our past; it is that we are not remembering accurately. In that
sense, we are shaping our memories.
A simple little experiment by Michael Ross, Cathy McFarland, and Garth
Fletcher sheds considerable light on how this might come about. In
their experiment, college students received a persuasive message
arguing the importance of frequent tooth brushing. After receiving the
message, they changed their attitudes toward tooth brushing. Needless
to say, this is not surprising. But here's what was surprising: That
same day, the students were asked, "How many times have you brushed
your teeth in the past 2 weeks?"Those who received the message
recalled that they brushed their teeth far more frequently than did
students in the control condition. The students were not attempting to
deceive the researcher; there was no reason for them to lie. They were
simply using their new attitudes as a guide to re-construct their past
history. In a sense, they needed to believe that they had always
behaved in a sensible and reasonable manner—even though they had just
now discovered what that sensible behavior might be.
Elizabeth Loftus has carried this line of research a step further. She
has succeeded in planting false memories of childhood experiences in
the minds of young adults by simply instructing a close relative to
talk about these events as fact. For example, if a young man's older
sister said to him, "Remember the time when you were five years old
and you got lost for several hours at the University City shopping
mall? And you went into a panic—and an oldish man tried to help you?
When we discovered you, you were holding the old man's hand and were
crying."
Within a few days of hearing such a story, most people will have
incorporated that planted memory into their own history, will have
embroidered it with details ("oh, yeah, the old man who helped me was
wearing a flannel shirt"), and will be absolutely certain that it
really happened—when, in fact, it didn't. This has been called the
false memory syndrome.
The Recovered Memory Phenomenon. Loftus's research on the planting of
false childhood memories has led her and many other cognitive
scientists to take a close and skeptical look at a recent societal
phenomenon: the recovered memory phenomenon. During the 1980s and
1990s, thousands of adults seemed to remember horrifying childhood
events that had been previously unavailable to them. Many of these
memories were about having been sexually molested, over a period of
months or years, by their father or some other family member. Some
memories even included (as part of the abuse) vivid 'accounts of
having been forced to participate in elaborate satanic rituals
involving such bizarre and gruesome activities as the killing and
devouring of infants. These memories were usually recovered during
intensive psychotherapy—frequently under hypnosis—or after reading a
vivid and highly suggestive self-help book.
Needless to say, sexual abuse does occur within families—and the
consequences of such abuse are tragic. Accordingly, all such
revelations should be taken extremely seriously. At the same time,
most cognitive scientists who have made a systematic study of human
memory are convinced that the majority of these reported memories do
not reflect reality. They argue that just as Sandra Barnes and Chuck
Barrett, with the help and encouragement of police and lawyers,
"remembered" incidents that never happened, and just as participants
in Elizabeth Loftus's experiments "remembered" the trauma of having
been lost for several hours at the University City shopping mall, it
appears to be the case that many people can be led to "remember"such
terrible things as childhood sexual abuse, or even detailed satanic
rituals that didn't really occur.
According to the scientists who have done systematic research on the
nature of memory, repeated instances of traumatic events occurring
over a long stretch of time are not usually forgotten; they assert
that, while this kind of thing might happen on rare occasions, it
simply is not the way memory typically works. Rather, they suggest
that, in a manner parallel to the Loftus experiments, many of these
memories of abuse may have been unintentionally planted by the
therapists themselves—not with any malevolent motive, of course, but
in a sincere attempt to help the client. Here's how it might come
about: Suppose a therapist holds the theory that certain fears or
personality characteristics (e.g., low self-esteem, fear of being
alone in the dark, fear of losing control) are symptomatic of having
been sexually abused. Into his or her office comes a person with some
of these characteristics. Over the course of the therapy, with the
best of intentions, the therapist might subtly suggest that these
events might have taken place. The therapist might then invite the
client to try to remember such instances and might unwittingly show
increased interest—even excitement—when the client begins to explore
these possibilities. Under these conditions, the client may begin to
construct a coherent set of memories that may nonetheless be totally
false.
Similarly, memory researchers have criticized self-help books—books
that attempt to guide people toward the uncovering of dark secrets
from their early childhood—on the grounds that the authors grossly
underestimate the power of suggestion and unwittingly lead people to
recover "memories" of events that never have taken place. For example,
one best-selling self-help book actually encourages people to spend
time trying to reconstruct their childhood story and goes on to list a
variety of possibilities that allegedly are related to abuse. Here is
a partial list; it is introduced in the following manner:
There are common characteristics that exist in families where abuse
takes place. You may not have experienced all of them, but you
probably experienced several.
• "I felt ashamed of my family."
• "There were things I couldn't talk about."
• "There were always a lot of secrets in my family."
• "Along with the bad things, there was a lot of good in my family."
• "At least one of my parents took drugs or drank a lot."
• "I was often humiliated and put down."
• "A lot of my basic needs weren't taken care of."
• "Things were chaotic and unpredictable in my household."
• "There were a lot of broken promises."
• "I'm not sure if I was abused, but when I hear about sexual abuse
and its effects, it all sounds creepy and familiar."
As you can see, some of the items on this list would apply to most of
us—whether or not we experienced anything resembling sexual abuse.
Furthermore, as John Kihlstom has recently pointed out, there is no
scientific evidence of a specific link between child sexual abuse and
any of these kinds of checklist items. What are we to make of
a'situation where thousands of adults assert that they were sexually
abused as children, repressed the memory of abuse, and now, after
reading this book, seem to remember the abuse? On the one hand, we
have a desire to take each of these incidents seriously. If such a
thing did take place, it is indeed tragic, and our hearts go out to
the people who had such traumatic experiences. But what if the memory
is false? In the absence of any corroborating evidence, should the
person confront and prosecute the accused family member? Thousands of
people have done just that—and many families have been torn apart by
these accusations. As you might imagine, when people are accused of
such actions some 30 years after the alleged fact, it is usually
impossible for them to prove their innocence.
It goes without saying that this has been a highly controversial issue
in contemporary psychology. Some professional psychologists have been
willing to take these accounts at face value. But most cognitive
scientists, based on their research on memory, believe that, in the
absence of any corroborating evidence to suggest abuse, it would be
wrong to accuse the suspected family member of having committed this
serious crime. In addition to the scientific research we have
mentioned, researchers point to evidence from everyday life indicating
that many of these recovered "memories" of abuse, when carefully
examined, turn out to be either flat-out wrong or extremely unlikely.
For example, in some instances, several siblings sleeping in the same
room where the events allegedly occurred swore that they never took
place; occasionally, the accused perpetrator was hundreds of miles
away (e.g., serving in the military) when the series of events
allegedly occurred; in many instances, people who acquire such
memories in therapy have come to realize on their own, years later,
that the events never actually occurred— and retract their
accusations. Sometimes, where there should be clear evidence, it is
conspicuous by its absence. For example, as mentioned above, some
people have recovered the vivid "memory" of having been forced to
participate in a series of satanic rituals in which they killed and
ate babies and buried their remains. Some of these memories are
precise about where the bodies were buried. But thorough, systematic
searches by law enforcement officers have never succeeded in turning
up a single skeleton—and no coinciding kidnappings were reported that
would have supported the veracity of these accounts.
Many questions remain unanswered. For me, the most interesting one is,
what's in it for the victim? It's one thing to falsely remember
something relatively trivial, like having been lost in a shopping mall
as a child, but recovering a memory of having been sexually abused
would entail a lot of pain. If these events didn't, in fact, take
place, why would anyone be willing to believe they did? I do not have
a definitive answer to that question. I do have one case history that
may or may not be typical. This involves a close friend of mine, a
very bright, highly sophisticated middle-aged woman I will call
"Madelaine." Here is what she wrote:
I was at a very low point in life. I was feeling terribly unhappy and
insecure. My marriage had recently fallen apart. I was having a lot of
trouble relating to men. My professional life had taken a few terrible
hits. My self-esteem was at an all-time low. I had the strong feeling
that my life was out of control—and not what it should be. When I
picked up a self-help book and began to read about dysfunctional
families—and, more specifically, about characteristics of people who
have been sexually abused as children—and characteristics of families
where sexual abuse takes place—it was as if a flash bulb went off. In
some strange way, I actually felt a sense of relief—it was a feeling
of, "Oh, so that explains why I am so miserable!" The book told me
that, if I didn't remember specifics, it probably meant I was
repressing horrible memories. I felt like a detective. The more I
began to think about my childhood, the more things began to fall into
place. For several weeks, I vacillated between all kinds of emotions.
I was feeling anger at my father, humiliation, hurt—and also a sense
of relief. I now see that the relief came from the fact that, if I
could blame my unhappiness on something terrible that was done to me
when I was little, then I wouldn't have to take responsibility for my
own failures as an adult.
Luckily, I didn't ever confront my parents, because I came to realize
that the memories probably weren't reliable—I started to have new
"memories" in which the details of events were different. Both sets of
memories couldn't have been correct. Also, I came to realize the
events I'd "remembered" couldn't possibly have happened, for a whole
host of reasons. It was incredibly hard giving up the idea that there
was a clear, identifiable reason for my daily sadness and hurt. I was
very vulnerable and messed up when I read that book. I could have done
untold damage to my family—and to myself—if I had ever made public my
"memories." I still feel very angry—but not at my parents—at that damn
book!
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
--------------------------------
Remembering Dangerously
Like the witch-hunt trials of old, people today are being accused and
even imprisoned on 'evidence' provided by memories from dreams and
flashbacks -- memories that didn't exist before therapy. What is going
on here?
http://www.csicop.org/si/9503/memory.html
http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/IM_97/Lecture7/L7.html
