What Your Birthdate Says About You
Eyewitness Testimony
One important application of research into memory is eyewitness testimony (EWT). EWT is used as evidence in criminal trials in countries all over the world. Juries tend to pay extra attention to eyewitness testimony and generally see it as very trustworthy and convincing. However, a great deal of research in cognitive psychology tells us that, in general, people's memories are fairly fallible. This section examines some of the psychological factors that can affect the accuracy of EWT. It is split into two main sections: • • Reconstructive Errors & Leading Questions Weapon Focus and Violence Distraction
Reconstructive Errors
Many people believe that memory works something like a videotape. Storing information is like recording and remembering is like playing back what was recorded, with information being retrieved in much the same form as it was encoded. However, memory does not work in this way. It is a feature of human memory that we do not store information exactly as it is presented to us. Rather, people extract from information the gist, or underlying meaning. In other words, people store information in the way that makes the most sense to them. We make sense of information by trying to fit it into schemas, which are a way of organising information. Schemas are general purpose 'packets' of knowledge that correspond to frequently encountered people, objects or situations. They allow us to make sense of what we encounter in order that we can predict what is going to happen and what we should do in any given situation. Schemas are a very effective way of processing information. Besides making the world more predictable, they remove the need to store similar information more than once. For example, if you think about a kitchen, you will probably find that your idea of kitchens includes features like a cooker, a fridge, cupboards, work surfaces and so on. Your schema for 'kitchen' includes these features, because you have discovered through
One important application of research into memory is eyewitness testimony (EWT). EWT is used as evidence in criminal trials in countries all over the world. Juries tend to pay extra attention to eyewitness testimony and generally see it as very trustworthy and convincing. However, a great deal of research in cognitive psychology tells us that, in general, people's memories are fairly fallible. This section examines some of the psychological factors that can affect the accuracy of EWT. It is split into two main sections: • • Reconstructive Errors & Leading Questions Weapon Focus and Violence Distraction
Reconstructive Errors
Many people believe that memory works something like a videotape. Storing information is like recording and remembering is like playing back what was recorded, with information being retrieved in much the same form as it was encoded. However, memory does not work in this way. It is a feature of human memory that we do not store information exactly as it is presented to us. Rather, people extract from information the gist, or underlying meaning. In other words, people store information in the way that makes the most sense to them. We make sense of information by trying to fit it into schemas, which are a way of organising information. Schemas are general purpose 'packets' of knowledge that correspond to frequently encountered people, objects or situations. They allow us to make sense of what we encounter in order that we can predict what is going to happen and what we should do in any given situation. Schemas are a very effective way of processing information. Besides making the world more predictable, they remove the need to store similar information more than once. For example, if you think about a kitchen, you will probably find that your idea of kitchens includes features like a cooker, a fridge, cupboards, work surfaces and so on. Your schema for 'kitchen' includes these features, because you have discovered through