EWT Q

Question 1

structure

Answer 1

intro
para 1 - emotional arousal and attention
para 2 - flashbulb memories and confidence
para 3 - memory distortion and false memory
para 4 - implications
conclusion

Question 2

Introduction

Answer 2

• EWT have a crucial role in criminal investigations and serve a very important purpose
• Violent crimes elicit strong emotional reactions such as fear, stress, shock which could affect memory
• Explore how emotional arousal, attention and memory distortions influence EWT with support from psych theory and research

Question 3

Para 1 - emotional arousal and hypothesis

Answer 3

• Easterbrook (1959) hypothesis
  o Emotion narrows attention, central info remembered, peripheral forgotten
• Cristianson (1992)
  o Attention for non central details often poor in emotional contexts
  o Late conceptual processing - rehearsal of central info only
• Loftus and burns (1982)
  o Ppts in violent conditions forget contextual details - due to emotional trauma
  significant difference to nonviolent group
• Valentine and Mesout 2009
  o High anxiety associated with reduced accuracy in identifying perpetrator in a realistic setting

Question 4

Valentine & Mesout 2009 crit ev

Answer 4

Strengths
* High ecological validity, in a naturally stressful environment, London dungeons

Limitations
* Sample was selected by researchers, may introduce researcher bias
* Hard to control stress levels precisely, questions internal validity
 Offers realistic insight but replication in controlled environment needed

Question 5

para 2 - flashbulb memories

Answer 5

• Brown & Kulik (1977) Flashbulb memory hypothesis
  o People form vivid, detailed memories during emotional events, ASSUMED to be accurate
• Talarico & Rubin (2003)
  o Memories are vivid and confidently held, but consistency decreased over time
• looks at 911 and everyday memories
• tested 1, 6 and 32 weeks later
• Winograd & Neisser (1992)
  o Looked at real life trauma, challenger explosion
  o Memory distortion was common, ppts later recollections differed significantly from original accounts
  o Ppts were highly confident in accuracy of later memories
  o Flashbulb mems not immune to forgetting or reconstruction
• Kesinger et al 2006
  o Emotional content boosts memory for details but not for contextual info
• Evaluation
  o Flashbulb memories can mislead police if not as accurate as believed
  o Confidence does not mean accuracy, important for evaluating testimony reliability

Question 6

Talarico and Rubin 2003 crit ev

Answer 6

 Strengths
* Longitudinal study helps to establish cause and effect comparing the different types of memory
o Reduces recall bias and increases internal validity
* Directly compared flashbulb to everyday memories with same retention intervals

 Limitations
* Relies on self-reported memories
* Unable to check accuracy of memories externally as self-reported memories

 Compellingly challenges assumption emotional memories are more accurate – high confidence is misleading

Question 7

para 3 - memory distortion and false memory

Answer 7

Misinformation Effect (Loftus), Source Monitoring Error
* Memories are malleable and susceptible to suggestion or confusion between sources

• Laney & Loftus (2008): People can be led to recall emotional events that never occurred.
  o Strengths
   High control over experimental conditions, allows for replicable findings
  o Limitations
   Low stake implanted memories, difficult to generalise to high emotion, high stake events
• Kaplan et al (2016)
• strong evidence that emotion, especially arousal, increases false memory susceptibility
• likely due to enhance gist processing and impaired detail encoding
• restricted generalisability due to reliance on DRM paradigm

Evaluation:
* Suggestibility is high in stressful contexts — important for police not to ask leading questions.
* Real-world implications: innocent people may be misidentified due to confident but inaccurate memories.

Question 8

para 4 - Implications

Answer 8

• Avoid leading q’s (Loftus)
• Be cautious relating confidence to accuracy (Talarico & Rubin)
• Trauma and stress might selectively distort memory (Valentine and musso)

Question 9

Conclusion

Answer 9

• Reiterate relationship between emotion and memory and its complexities – central details may be remembered well but not always accurately
• EWT confidence may not be reliable indicator of truth
• Police must be aware of these factors

Question 10

Why confidence and not consistency?

Answer 10

Strong amygdala activity during encoding - key central aspects memory enhanced

This may bias people to believe they are remembering vividly with more accurate detail than they are (Sharot & Phelps, 2004)
Leads them to assume if detailed accurate memory for one component means the same for others