Bibliography

The Study of Human Memory

Background: Memory stretches back at least 2,000 years to Aristotle’s early attempts to understand memory. An 18^th Century English philosopher David Hartley was the first to hypostasize that memories were encoded through hidden motions in the nervous system. However, not until the mid-1880s a young German philosopher Herman Ebbinghaus developed the first scientific approach of studying memory. Many researchers and philosophers and are mentioned in this piece.

How I Used It:  I  used Elizabeth Loftus studies, an American cognitive psychologist and expert on human memory.  This article showed me the understanding on how false memories and misinformation can effect eyewitness information.  Memory isn’t something we can hold in our hand, it’s a mental process that is very hard to explain.

Memory Encoding

Background: Encoding is an important first step to creating a new memory. It allows the perceived item of interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain, and then recalled later from short-term or long-term memory. The process of memory begins with attention regulated by parts of the brain in which a memorable event causes neurons to release, making the experience more intense and increasing an event of memory.

How I Used It:  I didn’t use this information I read about memory encoding so I would have an understanding of how the brain processes information.  What triggers memory recall.

How many of your memories are fake?

Background: This article illustrates the study of people with highly superior Autobiographical Memory-those who can remember dates, time of the event the day of the week.  New studies show people with phenomenal memory are susceptible to having  “false memories,” suggesting that “memory distortions are basic and widespread in humans, and it may be unlikely that anyone is immune.”

How I Used It:   deeper into the studies of false memories how can one person remember dates and events that happened years ago and quizzed on an event that happened 15 minutes ago and have no recollection?

How Much of Your Memory Is True?

Background: New research is showing memories are constantly being re-written. Rita Magil was in a horrible car accident.   She recovered, but was plagued by the memories of cement barriers coming towards her when she was doing simple household chores such as cooking. More than a year after her accident, Magil saw Brunet’s ad for an experimental treatment for PTSD, and she volunteered. She took a low dose of a common blood-pressure drug, propranolol, that reduces activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions.

How I Used It:  Is Brunet on to something and able to re-write long-term memory. I will research some long-term memory studies and compare my findings and beliefs if there is an explanation to false memories.

Listen The BBC Radio Show On Eyewitness Accounts

Background: During the broadcast the presenter, Dr. Raj Persaud finds out how difficult it is to recall something accurately when he takes part in a memory recall experiment. He also talks to Andrew Rolph former police officer and Manager of the Identification Bureau for the Grampian Police, about the issues surrounding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

How I Used It:  Reviewed video for claims and argue unreliable claims apply new techniques to extracting information from eyewitness.

What is Muscle Memory

Background:  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  If you are learning the wrong techniques, studying the wrong material or practicing a song and singing the wrong words.  The key to a good memory is quality not quantity.

How I Used It:   Enhancing new techniques by using the right methods to extract information from an eyewitness.  How behavior test can validate memory.

Memory

Background: Eyewitness testimony is retrieved in stages.  Witnessing the incident, waiting period before giving the evidence, giving the evidence.

How I Intend to Use It: Information will support each stage of retrieval  and look for new ways to extract information, timing, environment, smells, emotions.

How to Improve Eyewitness Testimony

Background:  The more you remember an event the less reliable it becomes. Eyewitness should only have only seconds to remember a event.

How I Used It:  Research the timing of eyewitness testimony.  Questioning an eyewitness immediately after the event.  When it comes to the memory more deliberation is dangerous. I used this information in my first rebuttal that turned out to be more of the opposite than an argument.

How To Make Eyewitness Testimony More Reliable

Background: Eyewitness testimony is one of the most powerful forms of evidence in a trial. It’s also one of the most problematic; in fact, it’s “the number one cause of wrongful convictions,” says Daniel Medwed.  Medwed is a law professor at Northeastern and a member of the new Standing Committee on Eyewitness Identification, which was recently convened by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The committee is charged with devising police and court procedures that take into account the central lesson of research on eyewitness testimony: “Our memories of what we see aren’t static. They’re elastic and malleable and change over time,” Medwed says.

How I Used It:  Extracted techniques that can be used to enhance to reliability of eyewitness testimony.

Emotions Affect Memory Reliability

Background:  Leading memory theories claim that adults remember negative events better than children and have fewer false memories resulting from them.

How I Used It:  I planned on using this information to write about  childhood memories and as my research grew my topic changed.  Interesting piece of information is when an experience has negative emotional qualities, true memory levels are lowest and false memory levels are highest.  This could be a contributing factor to misidentification.

“152 Marked Innocent, Marked for Death”

Background: New York times did a piece on 152 innocent people that were on death row. The article references how prosecutors want to win a case and will coerce their witnesses.

How I Used It:  Reference the cases that were based on false testimony.   Used examples provided by the “macarbe club.”  Cited two of the cases that I found to be good examples to share with my readers.

“How Many Innocent People Have We Sent To Prison?”

Background:  This article was about a woman by the name of Beverly Monore who spend seven years in a Virginia prison for a crime she didn’t commit.  The  information that intrigued me was uncovering the exonerationregistry.org data.

How I Used It:  I used the information in this article to educate my readers about the website and the data that has been collected.  Mostly to show the percentages of convictions based on eyewitness testimony.