Post 1
The post brings up an important topic of the effect of misinformation on eyewitness memory. Most importantly, the importance of the topic was highlighted when you mentioned that ‘it causes jeopardy in the court room’. A false memory is not simply a mistake or a lie, but rather a corruption of one’s personality and one becomes a victim of a memory that did not happen. There is a tendency for eyewitness memory to be influenced by misleading post-event information. This is because memory distortion after exposure to misinformation makes a lie become a memory truth (Dodd, 2014). However, for children, unlike adults, the output of false memories can be suppressed when intentionally asked to do so during retrieval (Howe, 2011). The courts often rely on evidence or accounts of the parties involved in a case and, in this instance, understanding that the parent’s account was false and you had the right information in your memory, it was not practical to give a recollection that you understood was false.
Post 2
In the post, you have raised an important point in relation to memory and manipulation. In particular, I liked when you mentioned that ‘people naturally envision a scene that is worse’ in the process of recollection and this aspect of manipulation has been scientifically proven. Overall, there is no single memory system, but instead a set of processes and systems that allow recollection (Robertson, 2012). In this sense, memories are rich seams of information, but also subject to distortion and decay. However, the influence of stress on recollection is conspicuously missing in your argument. Traumatic experiences after abuse can elicit high levels of stress and individuals may exhibit an exaggerated level of arousal (Howe, 2011). This turns out to be problematic when an individual under stress is being queried about stressful experiences and can explain the reason behind the exaggeration in their recollections. This is because an individual’s capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information is affected by circumstances and the professional help in the retrieval was thus warranted.
References
Dodd, S. (2014). False Memory. New York, NY: Book Country.
Howe, M. L. (2011). The Nature of Early Memory: An Adaptive Theory of the Genesis and Development of Memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Robertson, E. M. (2012). New Insights in Human Memory Interference and Consolidation. Current Biology, 22(2), R66-R71.
