Psychology Reconstructive Memory and Eyewitness Testimony

Reconstructive Memory

• Memory is not a passive recording but an active reconstruction, influenced by inferences during encoding and retrieval.
• Information present after an event, perspectives during retrieval, and general knowledge influence memory.
• Expectations and assumptions can also play a role in memory recall.

Attentional Blindness and Change Blindness

• Attentional blindness demonstrates that things can happen in plain sight, yet be missed.
• Change blindness occurs when a change happens during a shift in attention (e.g., an interruption).

Eyewitness Memory

• Weapon Focus: Eyewitnesses may concentrate on a weapon, potentially distracting them from other important details.
• Studies show that the presence of a weapon can significantly affect eyewitness identification accuracy (e.g., Loftus et al., 1987; Loftus, 1979; Pickle, 1999).
• The type of item (e.g., gun vs. pen) and the unexpected nature of an item affect identification accuracy.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Procedural Memory: Stores information about skills (motor and cognitive), including classical conditioning effects.
• Declarative Memory: Holds information about facts and personally experienced events. This further breaks down into:
  • Episodic Memory: Stores personally experienced events with contextual details (time, place).
  • Semantic Memory: Stores general knowledge, independent of time or place.

Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Paradigm

• Participants often recall "critical lures" (words semantically related to presented words) as if they were actually part of the list.
• Warnings during recall don't reduce false memory.
• Warnings during encoding before studying the list reduces false memories. This indicates that a part of the effect happens during encoding.

Bartlett (1932) and Schemas

• Bartlett studied errors in recalling complex stories, emphasizing the role of meaning & organization in encoding and retrieval.
• His concept of "effort after meaning" highlights the active process people use to make sense of and organize information.
• He introduced the concept of schemas: organized bodies of knowledge used to encode and retrieve information.

Schemas

• Schemas are frameworks of knowledge representing the world (e.g., people, events, actions). They organize information which affects memory recall.

Summary

• Recall is a constructive process shaped by inferences and prior knowledge.
• Attentional and memory biases can lead to errors in eyewitness accounts and memory recollection.
• Schemas play a powerful role in memory encoding and retrieval.