PSYCHOLOGY Essay Research Paper The intention of

PSYCHOLOGY Essay, Research Paper

The intention of this essay is to discuss the assertion that the human memory is fragile, in light of psychological research concerning encoding, storage and retrieval. This is a subject area with a vast quantity of information to draw from and to include all this in the essay would make it far too long. Therefore, for each of the process areas, one example has been researched and discussed.

The conclusion of this essay is that from the three examples described, it would appear that the human memory is indeed fragile and able to be influenced even without a person.s knowledge. Appreciation and understanding of these weaknesses is of great importance in the criminal justice system. As police officers we have a duty to search for the truth, not a vague idea of what it may be.

Encoding

The process that will be discussed under this heading is stress of witnesses and how that effects encoding of memories.

It would be reasonable to suppose that witnessing or being the victim of a serious crime, a subject would feel the affects of stress. It is how, if at all, this has a bearing on the encoding process for those memories, and the impact that has on investigations.

There are two main applications relating to stress in this section. The first relates to the YERKES-DODSON Law, describing the basic relationship between a crime and a witness.s ability to recall accurate detail (Yerkes & Dodson 1908 as stated in Gruneberg & Morris 1992). This is described as being an inverted U shape curve and states that performance related to stress occurs in a curvilinear fashion. Very low levels of stress produces poor performance, moderate levels of stress facilitate performance and excess amounts of stress hinder performance and bring it back down. The function of the U will alter along with the different way people deal with stress and the circumstances of the to-be-remembered (TBR) event.

Peters ((1988) as stated in Grunberg & Morris 1992) supported Yerkes & Dodson.s hypothesis with his empirical studies. He concluded that stress directly affected the ability of a witness to report crime. His experiment studied subjects meeting a nurse who injected them and a researcher who did not. Then one day and one week later photographs were shown to the subjects of these two people. From this he found that he received better descriptions and identifications from the photographs of the researcher than of the nurse. This he concluded demonstrated that as arousal increases, much beyond normal, accuracy of the memory suffers.

The second application in this section comes by way of an opposing theory to that of Yerkes & Dodson and Peters. Laboratory studies conducted by various professionals (Hever & Reisberg 1990; Christianson, Loftus, Hoffman & Loftus 1991; Christianson & Loftus 1991 and Yuille & Cutshall 1986 as stated in Gruneberg & Morris 1992) concluded that high levels of stress does not necessarily lead to poor memory.

The study conducted by Yuille & Cuthall ((1986) as stated in Milne & Bull 1999) indicated that following a highly stressful incident (a homicide) witnesses accuracy rate was 93% when interviewed two days after the TBR event. Even four to five months later the accuracy rate was 88%. Christianson & Hubinette ((1993) as stated in Milne & Bull 1999) with their study of bank tellers following an armed robbery, also supported this theory with the accuracy of their information. However, both of these studies looked at the accuracy or quality of the information from the witnesses, not the quantity.

These studies only recorded subjects that were in close proximity to or involved in the incident. They do not concluded in their research that proximity of the witness might counter balance the high stress to aid memory (Gruneberg & Morris 1992).

In their study of a one hundred and twenty probationary police officers, Yuille, Davies, Gibling, Marxsen & Parker ((1994) as stated in Milne & Bull 1999) researched both these areas. Whilst putting the probationers in both stressful and non-stressful simulations, they concluded that stress decreased the quantity of accurate information but improved the accuracy and the resistance to decay over time.

Yuille & Cutshall ((1989) as stated in Milne & Bull 1999) go onto suggest that the accurate encoding and recalling of information may result from the subject rehearsing the scene in his or her mind, or recounting it to others so reinforcing it in their memory.

Howe, Courage & Peterson ((1994 as stated in Milne & Bull 1999) go further and say, the very stressful nature of the event will focus the subjects attention to core aspects of it. There may be internal feelings or external event factors, however, this narrowing of attention may assist with the memories being stored and remembered for longer.

This focusing, however, can be draw back as well as an aid to the encoding of information. At the scene of an armed robbery, there can be tendency to focus on a particular part of the event; this is called detail salience. In particular the presence of a weapon, especially a lethal weapon, can focus the witnesses attention so much that other detail such as description of the offenders are not paid attention to and therefore not encoded and