In the article “Thanks for memories” permanence of memory is not only questioned but also demonstrated through ingenious experiments that memory changes due to intervening external factors. There is a strong belief among common people that eye-witness reports are accurate and the narration by them is precise account of events that they have seen. Elizabeth Loftus is the pioneering psychologist who has demonstrated that human memory is not static, but a changing cognitive phenomenon having application in many fields, especially eyewitness testimony.
The research article is an attempt to illustrate that the questions people ask to a person can alter his or her memory, especially the questions that have presuppositions. Loftus defines the concept of presupposition as a situation that posits to be true within the question. An example of a question with presupposition is, suppose you have seen a group of people going in a car, somebody ask you “how many drunkards were therein the car?” instead of “how many people were there in the car?” The former question presupposes that there were drunkards in the car. Loftus observed that, the way the questions are worded, affect the memory. In the above example the person who has heard the question “How many drunkards were there in the car” is likely to remember that there were drunkards in the car. The body of arguments Loftus had built were targeted to demonstrate that if eyewitnesses were asked questions that contained presupposition (though false) about the witnessed event, the new information gets incorporated into the witness's memory. The affected memory of the eyewitness influences the testimony negatively about the event.
The central part of the research is the four experiments, which used the video graph of events (three car accidents and a three minute shot from a movie). All the four experiments converged to the point that wording of the questions affected the memory of the viewer; the results are statistically significant too. In the light of the results of the experiments and other studies the researcher proposes that a theory of memory and recall must incorporate the concept of reconstruction of memory. The process of reconstruction of memory occurs when new information gets integrated into the original scheme of memory. The article rejects the belief that people just replay what they have witnessed or listened. The belief that people have intact memory and they can recall the exact order of the events has been proved to be wrong. Instead, a theory of memory and recall emerged from the work of Loftus, called memory reconstruction theory. The article graphically presents the comparison of traditional explanation of the memory recall and the reconstructive process. The intermediary cognitive process is illustrated in the graphical comparison. The intervening information distorts the memory and conjures up the witness story. The reconstructive process is unintentional, and beyond awareness of the individual.
The theory of reconstruction of memory has many applications, especially in the field of forensics. In criminal investigations, the eyewitnesses may be questioned many times by police, investigating agency, paralegals, prosecuting attorney, etc. Each time the witness confronts the questions, the memory gets reconstructed (though unintentionally), without the awareness of the witness. The innocent sounding and insignificant questions such as “was the car had park lights?” influence the memory of the witness. What the jury and judge listen from the witness is actually the reconstructed tale of the original memory. In the light of the research findings, Loftus openly admits that because she studies memory, she is skeptic. Should the legal system review the dependence on eye witness testimonies? Does the historical tales also a product of reconstruction? Where are we going with our memory?
REFERENCES
Loftus, E. F “Leading questions and the eyewitness report,” Cognitive Psychology, 7, 560-572, 1975.
