Question

You are considered to be an expert in false memories, and a local district attorney has therefore requested your expertise on the following case:

On Tuesday, March 6, 2007, a bank was robbed in Slidell, LA. It was just after opening time, 9:04 a.m., and there were barely any customers, when a car arrived and parked in the side parking lot of the bank. Two men came out of the car and walked to the entrance. Both wore dark clothing. Upon entering the bank, they held out guns and asked for the manager. When the manager identified herself, the smaller of the two robbers ordered her to open the safe. Meanwhile, the other robber, a tall, and burley man, walked around holding his gun in his outstretched arm, and threatening the remaining employees and customers. The manager complied and the smaller robber collected all the money and valuables from the safe. After five minutes, the big robber asked if his companion was ready to go. When he was, the two ran back to their car, and drove away.

The district attorney has asked that you create a presentation about false memory and explain how it might influence this case. He asks that you specifically address the following:Describe false memory and false memory experiments.

Answer 1

False memories are distorted or inaccurate recollection of information. False memories are mistaken to be real recollection of events. One of the main causes of false memories is the misinformation effect.This means that a distortion in memory happens when an information is given to a person after the incident has occurred, which distorts their recollection of events. This phenomenon is known as the misinformation effect.

Elizabeth Loftus conducted important research on the reliability of eyewitness identification and testimony. In her study, she showed a video recording of a simulated vehicle accident at an intersection with a stop sign. Later, the participants were told that there was a yield sign at the intersection. Afterwards, the participants were asked to describe what they saw on the footage. The participant who were told that there was a yield sign, described with confidence that there was a yield sign: the remaining participants, on the other hand, were more accurate in their description.

Another experiment by Loftus and Palmer was done in which the participant were shown videos of car collisions. Some participants saw the videos of car colliding at 20mph, some at 30mph and others at 40mph. After the videos were shown, the participants were asked about the speed of the car. The way each participant was asked was different, where the wording used was different. This change in wording resulted in the participants estimating the speed of the car rather than there memories. This experiment had demonstrated the framing effect. Framing effect is the effect where the question framed in specific way influenced the memories.