Memory as a Tape Recorder

Memory Failures

Transcience - Forgetting with the passage of time, most forgetting occurs immediately, decrease over time
Blocking - failure to retrieve information that is available in memory even though you are trying to produce it
Suggestibility - Tendancy to incorperate misleading information into personal recollection
Misattributions - assigning a memory to the wrong source
Biases - distorting influences of present knowledge on recollection of past events, e.g. consistency bias, change bias, egocentric bias

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EWT is used to convict people in court
Wise and Safer (2004) - 34% of 160 US judges believed that confidence correlated with accuracy of EWT
Case of Timothy Cole - wrongfully convicted of **** after he was idnentifed by the victim, sentenced to 25 years, he died in prison.
Belief in the myth can create serious consequences.

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Alvarez and Brown (2002) - 36% of people believe the myth
Neisser and Harsch (1992) - research into flashbulb memories, people asked about the disintergration of the challenger shuttle 24 hours after and 2 and a half years after. There were large differences between the two accounts
Deese-Roedinger-McDermott paradigm - false memories can easily be implanted
Hymen - implanted false childhood memory of traumatic event
Case of John Dean - reported on the Watergate scandal, his statements were truthful but inaccurate, misattributio of comments to wrong dates, infalted his own importance in conversations (egoistic bias)

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