The psychology of memory blindness

The psychology of memory blindness

Choice blindness and misinformation effect are ways that manifest memory blindness. Choice blindness referring to people misled by their own self-reported choices are given several options and told to state their preference. They ought to explain the reason for their decision. Unknown to the participants there is concealed manipulation, which makes them pick a different choice from their initial selection. The misinformation effect is when people get or interpret false information from an event that occurred, and they will in co-operate the false memory into their memory of events. The two experiments will sum up memory blindness as a whole. In the first experiment, volunteers witnessed an incident and tested on their minds, given the episodic of the events. In the second experiment, participants identified a photo of the suspect from a lineup, given misinformation about their selection and told to choose again. The results showed that memory blindness occurred in a significant number of the participants, and they can lead to distortion in eye witness memory. This study is essential as it will help in the analysis of witness’s reports to determine their accuracy. The research shows that witnesses may alter their information when identifying suspects; thus, conduct thorough investigations which will help in the legal system.

The purpose of this research is to study memory blindness, to distinguish the differences and similarities between the two and how they can be integrated into an experiment to determine how changed memory accounts contributes to deformation in eye witness memory. The hypothesis of this research is to determine whether there is a significant effect between the proportion of participants to memory blindness categorized as choice blindness and misinformation effects.   Recent studies try to investigate if choice blindness has a long-term impact on eyewitness memory as it affects an individual’s attitude. This research is looking to answer whether memory blindness can lead to distortion of information and therefore determine the accuracy of the information given by witnesses

The method of research used is an experiment as it is a quantitative method of analysis. It has a proportion of participants failing to notice manipulation as the dependent variable and Memory blindness as the independent variable. The experiment manipulates the independent variable, which is memory blindness in an attempt to identify the number of participants that fail to notice manipulation when giving reports as eyewitnesses. The experiment measured the number of participants experiencing manipulation was being. There is a high percentage of the participants that experience memory distortion and its effects when giving information as eyewitnesses. They measured their variables using a one way ANOVA, a regression model and mean.

The result shows the long term effects memory blindness has for eye witness memory. Implications mainly on the legal system as witnesses may be manipulated and have altered information, thus affecting the ruling of a case. The hypothesis was supported as there was a significant (ps <.05.) effect between the number of participants, (witnesses) and those affected by memory blindness. Findings of this research mean that the research question for this topic has .been answered as the outcomes are significant and are supporting the research question. In future, research should use retrieval enhanced suggestibility where the participants’ test showed better results than memory blindness.

The study has fully satisfied that there is altered memory distortion among eyewitnesses; therefore, conducting more investigation should continue as relying entirely on eyewitnesses may not give conclusive evidence because of memory blindness.  I liked the study conducted as it was able to support its hypothesis and research question. The research was able to give a precise analysis of the data collected, and it was clear. The study was not hard to grasp and understand. The only different aspect of the research I would change was using online participants. I would decrease the sample size and use fewer participants to interview participants and observe them. Research on the future should aim in trying to come up with methods of measuring detection such as word frequency and semantic analysis, which would give a more accurate result.

References

Kevin J. C, Rachel L. G, Daniel F. B & Elizabeth F. L (2016). Altered memory reports lead to distortion in eyewitness memory: memory cog, 44,717–726. DOI 10.3758/s13421-016-0594-ys