False Memories And False Confessions Summary

There have been numerous cases where false conviction has ruined someone’s life. This too, happened to Tammy Marquardt (Wynne), a middle-aged woman currently 43, who had lost all three of her sons during her early twenties due to the false charges of smothering and murder that imprisoned her. It changed her life completely. She would have never expected to go from being a regular single mom to being a criminal, but she did. This is her story.

Ph.D. Charlotte Witvliet at Hope College, along with her colleagues, hooked up seventy-one student participants (36 female & 35 male) to monitors in order to examine the physiological and emotional effects of imagining hurtful memories and harboring a grudge as opposed to exhibiting forgiveness to personal offenders. Each student participant was asked to complete a two-part test. First they were asked to imagine a particular person that they assigned blame to for either offending or hurting them, followed by a questionnaire about the nature of the offense and response to it. Then each student participant was asked to actively imagine either forgiving or not forgiving (the independent variables) the perpetrator.

Johnson states that according to the APA, “it is not possible to distinguish repressed memories from false ones without corroborating evidence” (par. 2). This brings up a critical issue how could the jury decide if a memory was false or a repressed one that was eventually remembered. According to Johnson, the three stages of memory are encoding, Consolidation/Storage, and retrieval (par. 3) An error at any stage of the memory process can lead to the creation of false memories (par. 4). Johnson suggests that under extremely traumatic events false memories have a significant chance of being formed.

While memories allow people to have a positive perception of the past, thinking back to them frequently leads to an unclear understanding of the present. Melinda’s

Forensic psychologists will help create a criminal profile through the use of interviews and assessments to understand the victim or the possible offender. This allows for a better understanding of the individual and for the offender to be brought to justice (Godwin et al., 2001). Courts have relied on forensic assessments of offenders or witnesses in order to make sound decisions (Nicholson & Norwood, 2000). Overall, this episode was able to demonstrate the flaws of polygraphs, illustrate an interview, and depict a false rape allegation despite the reasoning behind the action. Forensic psychologists play a role in the criminal justice to reach an end goal and was demonstrated in this episode of Lie to

Forensic psychology focuses on legal matters such as mental state examinations of criminal defendants, child custody/family law, violence risk assessment, civil law, social science research, mediation/dispute resolution, etc… But in this case, we will be focusing on the matter of “false confessions”. This is seen mainly in interrogations between the interrogator and a suspect. It is when a suspect confesses to a crime and maybe even believes they committed the crime, even though they have not. A confession would be defined as an admission of guilt, whereas a false confession is the admission of guilt by an innocent.

Selective amnesia is a type of amnesia that results in the victim losing part of his/her memory. In this case, after she was found by the little beach, She began having difficulty remembering what had occurred prior to the accident. Knowing this, it’s natural for the reader to begin doubting the words of the narrator. Especially when the said narrator seems to be doubting her own knowledge on the situation. With her always doubting her own thoughts and remembering next to nothing about her past, it makes sit all the more difficult to believe what she is saying.

Basic scientists are individuals who prefer to study occurrences in order to gather a better understanding to satisfy their curiosity. This process doesn’t resolve in answering the question but rather gaining the knowledge (Greene & Heilbrun, 2014). The basic scientists’ role in law enforcement is to conduct “research on the relationship between social attitudes and behavior can clarify why people obey or disobey the law” (Greene & Heilbrun, 2014). This predation is transferred to the courtroom through testimony and

Consequently, when interrogators go into interviews believing the suspect is guilty, it brings on intense amounts of stress, putting suspects at a higher risk to crack under pressure. E. This increased pressure brought on by misclassified interrogations cause innocent suspects to feel so much stress they confess to a crime they did not commit. F. Misclassified errors are just one way suspects feel their only option is to give a false confession in order escape the pressure in the interrogation room. II.

Three months later Maria, starts to show signs of consciousness and a week later she wakes up. Maria did not remember anything about her life prior to her incident. So, her doctor recommended that she meet with a therapist. After five months of testing and therapy, Maria slowly begins to remember bits and pieces about her life. (C) is Maria who remembers being a business owner but does not remember studying ballet.

As a child Julia was abused by her parents, her body adapted to this by going into a state of protection in her mind. Julia took herself away from the abuse by leaving the physical world and dissociating. The abuse traumatized her, so she began to dissociate throughout her whole childhood since she was abused for years. Therefore she couldn’t remember because her mind really wasn’t present at the time her childhood events took place. Even though dissociating kept

Certainly, memory pushes time and with memory unfolds new events, which make varied outcomes in one’s life. It is one thing to recall the sweet or the bitter past but it is one thing to find a healing and the might to move own in life. Another similarity worth noting, is that the memories all rely upon the characters, the memories of past love for Kate and Jim is really dug deep down their mind just like that of the protagonist in the La Jetee’s story where there the character is really disturbed and has an internal conflict.

Repressed memories are memories that our brains “hide” from us to help us avoid stress or trauma from a certain event that created the memory. Repressed memories usually happen because of a violent and traumatizing event such as sexual assault. Sometimes, these memories will come back many years later as flashbacks that are triggered by a certain situation. In this case, Eileen’s memory came back as flashbacks when she was looking at her daughter.

The new memories of seeing or hearing about someone committing a crime can then manipulate what was originally remembered, new interfering with old. These false accusations could have easily been implemented in a courtroom

The finding that an external suggestion can lead to the construction of false childhood memories helps us understand the process by which false memories arise. It is natural to wonder whether this research is applicable in real situations such as being interrogated by law officers or in psychotherapy. Although strong suggestion may not routinely occur in police questioning or therapy, suggestion in the form of an imagination exercise sometimes does. When trying to obtain a confession, law officers may ask a suspect to imagine having participated in a criminal act.