General Psychology as an Introduction to Psychology (5) —— Memory Reconstruction Experiment

? Memory is a psychological process in which individual experiences are accumulated and preserved in the brain, and it is also a process in which the brain encodes, stores and extracts external input information. Different from sensory perception, what directly affects the senses at present is people's cognition of things, which is the input process of information. Memory is the process of information input.

? Someone once used a "camera" to describe memory, saying that when we repeat what we found, we are showing the scene again.

? But can memory really repeat what happened accurately?

? Elizabeth Lovester of the University of Washington is an outstanding scholar in the field of memory research. In her research, she found that when recalling a thing, it is not an accurate reproduction, but a reconstruction. She pointed out that memory is unstable, it will be adjusted and changed, and we will fill our memory with new information, existing information and past experiences. In this process, the result of omission is to reconstruct memory.

? For example, what is the situation? You are telling others that you went to Hainan last winter. You think you're describing the experience. But maybe other information in the description reconstructed your memory. The reason may be that you told others about the experience of the day before yesterday, or it may be someone else's description, or it may be the experience you have encountered.

? Such changes in daily life will not have much impact.

? However, Loft's research points out that in the judicial process, witnesses' testimony may also have memory reconstruction, and they may be influenced by the wording of the question, which will immediately change their memory of the event.

? In this regard, Lofster designed some experiments. She assumed that if the questions asked by the witnesses contained false assumptions about the events of the witnesses, the false information would be mixed into the memory of the witnesses and appear in the subsequent testimony.

? In the first experiment, 150 students watched a short film of about 1 minute, which told the story of an accident in which a driver illegally passed a no-go section, causing many cars to rear-end. Participants made a 10 questionnaire, and half of the participants' questionnaire was entitled "What is the speed of illegal vehicles passing through no-pass signs?" The other half of the questionnaire is entitled "How fast is the illegal vehicle turning right?" Other topics are the same, and the last question is the most critical. "Is there a no-go warning sign before this (illegal) vehicle?" .

? 53% of the respondents said yes to the first question, and only 35% of the respondents answered yes to the second question, which has reached a significant level difference.

? In the second experiment, Lofster adopted the test method of delayed memory. Let 40 subjects watch the video of 8 demonstrators interfering with the class. After reading it, the participants made a questionnaire. The first questionnaire of half the participants was entitled "Are the four demonstrators who entered the classroom male?" The other half of the subject questionnaire 1 is "Are the demonstrators who entered the classroom 12 led by men?" , the rest of the questions are the same.

? One week after the initial test, the subjects were asked to answer a new questionnaire without watching the video. One of the questionnaires was entitled "How many demonstrators did you see?" In the answer, the average number of demonstrators in the test group 12 was 8.85, and the average number of demonstrators in the test group 4 was 6.40. Of course, some people recall the numbers correctly, but there are significant differences in the former.

? It can be seen that the change of the wording of the question will have a great impact on the memory of witnesses.

? After doing a lot of such experiments, Lofster put forward his own opinion: the accuracy of memory and recall includes the reconstruction process, and when new information is integrated into the original memory, reconstruction occurs.

? Compared with the traditional view of memory, the new theory increases the process of integrating new information. When you are asked questions again, memory is no longer the actual process, but you will reconstruct it.

? In judicial and criminal cases, Lofster pointed out that in the process of answering related questions many times, witnesses inadvertently raised questions (possibly from police, procuratorate, court answers, etc. ), and finally their answer is "the intention of regeneration based on the changed memory representation".

? Her research examines how lawyers' complicated questioning methods affect the accuracy of witness testimony and the confidence of witnesses. At the same time, her research has also been applied to "fantasy memory". There is an opinion about the repressed experience and the restored memory, that is, the event did not happen at first, but in some cases, the distorted memory led to the emergence of "depression" (such as some cases of "abuse" or "violation").

? Finally, do you really think the memory is accurate? The way I ask questions may affect you. ...