FALSE MEMORYFALSE MEMORY EXPERIMENTS

False memory refers to cases in which people remember events differently from the way they happenedA broadly-accepted experimental paradigm to measure false memory did not emerge until the advent of the Deese Roedinger McDermott paradigm (DRM). DRM experiments demonstrate the pervasiveness of false memories both to prompting and free recal

FACTORS THAT CAUSE FALSE MEMORIES

Inaccurate perceptionInferencesInterferenceSimilarity

 eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other dramatic event that he or she has witnessed.  Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system.

Not all people are equally likely to form false memories. Generally speaking, children and older adults are more suggestible than college students in most false memory paradigms, although there are a few exceptions to this rule.

EYEWITNES TESTIMSONY

Last night's execution of convicted murderer Troy Davis reportedly sent those convinced of Davis' innocence into hysterics. This is not the first time a person is pretty much convicted based on eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidenceSeven of nine witnesses who implicated Davis in the shooting of a police officer recanted their testimonies. Others reporting the man who originally implicated Davis was actually the killer.Often, "the information getting into the memory system is very limited," Zaragoza told Live Science.The next source of memory uncertainty happens during the investigation. Suggestive questioning can distort memories

EYEWITNES TESTIMSONY

Many false memories are byproducts of processes that normally support veridical memory. It is efficient for the perceptual and memory systems to take shortcuts and focus on meaning extraction, since that will suffice in many cases. Sometimes relying on familiarity or other external sources is a good strategyFalse memories can trick third party observers like juries and lawyers in addition to tricking the remembered, and they can be very difficult to correct once a person becomes confident about an erroneous memory (often from repeatedly remembering the event a certain way)

Carrying of the eyewitness testimoniesThe courts’ reliance on witnesses is built into the common-law judicial system, A reliance that is placed in check by the opposing counsel’s right to cross-examinationan important component of the adversarial legal process—and the law’s trust of the jury’s common sense. The fixation on witnesses reflects the weight given to personal testimony.

Increasing or Reducing False Memory

"A lot of times people overestimate their ability to remember things, and this overconfidence can sometimes lead people [like a jury] to believe what they are saying," Chan told Live Science. "Guess what, most people's memories are not all that reliable.“

REFRENCESS

http://www.simplypsychology.org/eyewitness-testimony.html The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony Barbara Tversky, Professor of Psychology

Eyewitness Testimony by Saul McLeod  published 2009

Researchers Implant False Memories Into Mice Brains