Have you ever had a question that “Did I See What I Think
I Saw?”
Here is the answer for the above question
A. Eyewitness testimony is a crucial part of many
criminal trials even though research increasingly suggests that it may not be
as accurate as we (and many lawyers) would like it to be. For example, if you
witness a man in a blue sweater stealing something, then overhear people
talking about a gray shirt, how likely are you to remember the real color of
the thief's sweater?
Studies have shown that when people are told false
information about an event, they become less likely to remember what actually
happened - it is easy to mix up the real facts with fake ones. However, there
is evidence that when people are forced to recall what they witnessed (shortly
after the event), they are more likely to remember details of what really
happened.
Psychologists Jason Chan of Iowa State University, Ayanna
Thomas from Tufts University and John Bulevich from Rhode Island College wanted
to see how providing false information following a recall test would affect
volunteers' memories of an event that they witnessed.
A group of volunteers
watched the first episode of "24" and then either took an immediate
recall test about the show or played a game. Next, all of the subjects were
told false information about the episode they had seen and then took a final
memory test about the show.
The results, reported in the January issue of
Psychological Science, were surprising. The researchers found that the
volunteers who took the test immediately after watching the show were almost
twice as likely to recall false information compared to the volunteers who
played the game following the episode.
The results of a follow-up experiment suggest that the
first recall test may have improved subjects' ability to learn the false
information - that is, the first test enhanced learning of new and erroneous
information. These findings show that recently recalled information is prone to
distortion. The authors conclude that "this study shows that even
psychologists may have underestimated the malleability of eyewitness
testimony."
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