Eye Witness Memory

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of their face.

Biological factors:

It is proven through many studies that the ability to recognize unfamiliar faces increases from the age of 12-17 and then steadily declines. An other factor that plays a great role in the accuracy of the eye witness memory is the same race individuals, it is proven through the study (Wright, et al., 2001), that individuals of the same races tends to remember the features and looks of an unfamiliar person even if they saw them for few seconds and never met them again. These factors can play a crucial role in eye witness’s memory. Morgan concluded her study by concluding that eye witnesses/ victims who have been through a really stressful crime scene will make error in their testimony. She also recommended that sequential method can be the best tool to have accuracy of the information.

Another article that I came across was “Factors Affecting the Accuracy of Eyewitness

Identification”. In this article , the author talks about how confidence itself is a big factor in determining the accuracy of the information. The more confident the eye witness is , the more credible they are in the eyes of the jury. He further talks about how confidence itself is not a complete measure of the accuracy and post event questioners should be done to prove the accuracy of the eye witness. This article closely resembles the article by Brewer N. but does a great job at explaining ways to improve the accuracy of the eye witness memory. Lastly, I would say that there is there is a continuing need to understand how to improve the accuracy of the victim/eye witness because it could have serious consequences for the innocents or the foils.

This part of the essay presents I would present my own experiment that would improve the validity or the accuracy of the eye witness.

Hypothesis

Closing your eyes, taking that breaths and listening to a relaxing music will improve the memory recall. This is important to the study because soft music is known to empty or relax your mind and then closing your eyes makes it easier to recall memories.

Participants:

The participants in the study will be males and females ( 40 and 50 respectively). The participants will between the ages of 20 and above. The reason for this particular age group is because, it is known that between the ages of 11 and 19, your memory is really sharp therefore more accurate. The reason female ratio is more than male is because after reading the articles in part a , I would really want to test this for my self as to whether females have weak recalling of memory than males , in highly stressful situations?

The independent variable is the proper closure of eyes, that breaths and most important of all, relaxation music.They dependent variable in this case would be the current state of the participant’s mind .The experimental group are the individuals exposed to relaxation music and eye closure, while the control group are individuals whose responses are monitored through hidden cameras.

Experiment:

I will randomly assign the 90 individuals in two conditions. I will have a private room in which there will be a 45 participants will sit in their current state of mind and there will be a hidden camera and the interrogation officer will ask the questions from the participants directly related to the event and record their responses. The other half of the individuals will be placed in a room with completely opposite atmosphere, for the first 20 mins they will close their eyes, take that breaths and listen to relaxation music. After deep, these individuals will be asked the same questions as were asked from the participants with relaxing atmosphere, however , there will be a twist to the questionere. The officer will ask questions from the individuals to mislead them for first few questions , this is just to see if the eye closure, music really helped them with their memory or is it still the same.

Results:

I personally believe that 45 individuals with relaxed state of mind will be confident and accurate in their answers and will be deemed more credible. If these results are achieved, the experiment can be done again and again and if same results are achieved. The limitation to the study would , people under the age of 20 and over the age of 50 since those people are not taken into account, if this hypothesis is not proven right with that particular age group, there could be arguments against it.

Ethical Concerns:

Confidentiality: All of the participants information, their responses will kept for investigation purpose only and will stay in the custody of the police department. The participants will have to agree to that and sign. There fore , we have their consent before we move on with the experiment.

Conclusion:

Finally, I would finish this essay by saying that eye witness memory accuracy is really important. It was seen in all the three articles how accuracy plays an important role in credibility of the eye witness. We also looked at the consequences that misidentification can have on innocent/foils. We also looked quite a few experiment show different ways to prove the accuracy of the eye witness memory. The experiment/study conducted in second half of this essay shows how eye closure, relaxing music can help recall memories by bring the brain back to state it was before the event. More and more research should be done on this topic.