Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Distortion

This set of flashcards covers key concepts related to eyewitness testimony, memory distortions, and various memory theories stemming from the provided lecture notes.

Which phenomenon describes the failure to perceive an unexpected object in the visual environment due to attention being focused elsewhere?

A) Inattentional blindness (Correct)
B) Change blindness
C) Confirmation bias
D) Weapon focus

What is the term for the inability to notice visible changes in visual stimuli when attention is directed away or there's a brief interruption?

A) Change blindness (Correct)
B) Inattentional blindness
C) Verbal overshadowing effect
D) Misinformation effect

Which cognitive bias involves distortions of memory caused by the influence of one's own expectations about what is likely to have happened?

A) Confirmation bias (Correct)
B) Misinformation effect
C) Response bias theory
D) Source errors

What is the distorting effect on eyewitness memory when misleading information is encountered after a crime or event?

A) Misinformation effect (Correct)
B) Confirmation bias
C) Unconscious transference
D) Memory trace replacement theory

Eyewitnesses often have poor memory for details of a crime event because their attention is primarily drawn to the presence of a weapon. This phenomenon is known as:

A) Weapon focus (Correct)
B) Inattentional blindness
C) Easterbrook hypothesis
D) Verbal overshadowing effect

What is the tendency for eyewitnesses to more accurately identify individuals of the same age as themselves compared to those much older or younger?

A) Own-age bias (Correct)
B) Cross-race identification problem
C) Super-recognizers
D) Unconscious transference

Individuals who possess an outstanding and often exceptional ability to recognize human faces are typically referred to as:

A) Super-recognizers (Correct)
B) Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) individuals
C) Eyewitness memory experts
D) Cognitive interview specialists

When an eyewitness misidentifies a familiar, but innocent, face as belonging to the actual culprit, they are experiencing:

A) Unconscious transference (Correct)
B) Misinformation effect
C) Source errors
D) Dud effect

The reduction in recognition memory for faces that often occurs when eyewitnesses provide verbal descriptions of a face before a recognition test is known as the:

A) Verbal overshadowing effect (Correct)
B) Misinformation effect
C) Dud effect
D) Face inversion effect

An eyewitness’s increased confidence in their mistaken identification, especially when a lineup includes individuals very dissimilar to the actual culprit, refers to what effect?

A) Dud effect (Correct)
B) Confirmation bias
C) Weapon focus
D) Unconscious transference

Which classic experiment investigated the misinformation effect by using different words like 'hit' and 'smashed' to describe car accidents, influencing participants' memory?

A) Loftus & Palmer (1974) study (Correct)
B) Brown & Kulik (1977) study
C) Neisser & Harsch (1992) study
D) Bahrick's long-term memory studies

In Loftus's research on the misinformation effect, what was a key finding regarding participants who were given the word 'smashed' compared to 'hit' when describing a car accident?

A) Participants given the word 'smashed' provided higher speed estimates than those given 'hit'. (Correct)
B) Participants given 'smashed' remembered fewer details of the accident.
C) Participants given 'hit' reported seeing broken glass, unlike 'smashed' group.
D) There was no significant difference in speed estimates between the two groups.

What is the process where a participant's memory is altered to be consistent with external suggestions, such as faster speeds hinted by specific words in eyewitness testimony research?

A) Memory reconstruction (Correct)
B) Memory trace replacement
C) Source monitoring
D) Retrieval inhibition

Regarding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, which statement is generally true?

A) Confidence does not equal accuracy; police questioning can influence judgment. (Correct)
B) Eyewitness confidence is a strong indicator of accuracy.
C) Police questioning rarely influences eyewitness judgment.
D) Highly emotional events always lead to accurate eyewitness accounts.

When is misleading information most likely to be incorporated into memory, according to research on the timing effect?

A) Presenting misleading information immediately after an event increases incorporation into memory. (Correct)
B) Presenting misleading information long after an event.
C) Presenting misleading information during the event itself.
D) The timing of misleading information has no significant impact.

What characteristic of misleading details makes individuals more susceptible to incorporating misinformation into their memories?

A) Subtle details trigger susceptibility to misinformation incorporation. (Correct)
B) Obvious and glaring inconsistencies.
C) Information that directly contradicts their existing memory.
D) Information presented by an untrustworthy source.

Regarding the age effect on susceptibility to misinformation, which group is generally found to be more vulnerable?

A) Children are more susceptible to misinformation than adults. (Correct)
B) Adults are more susceptible to misinformation than children.
C) Elderly individuals are largely immune to the misinformation effect.
D) Susceptibility to misinformation is consistent across all age groups.

How might police interviews sometimes lead children to create false memories, particularly when suggestive techniques are used?

A) Police interviews may be suggestive, leading children to create false memories. (Correct)
B) Children are naturally prone to fabricating memories.
C) Police interviews always result in accurate recollection for children.
D) Only physical coercion leads to false memories in children.

Which theory proposes that false information introduced after an event can blend with the original memory, leading to the creation of one altered memory?

A) Memory trace replacement theory (Correct)
B) Coexistence theory
C) Response bias theory
D) Encoding specificity

According to which theory do two distinct memories exist in the mind—the original memory and a modified memory containing false information—after exposure to misinformation?

A) Coexistence theory (Correct)
B) Memory trace replacement theory
C) Response bias theory
D) Demand characteristics

Which theory suggests that misleading information primarily biases the subject's tendency to respond in a particular way during memory recall, rather than altering the memory itself?

A) Response bias theory (Correct)
B) Memory trace replacement theory
C) Coexistence theory
D) Source errors

Participants in an experiment may alter their memory responses to align with what they perceive as the researcher's expectations. This phenomenon is known as:

A) Demand characteristics (Correct)
B) Response bias
C) Confirmation bias
D) Illusion of truth

Beyond misinformation, which of the following is a significant factor known to affect eyewitness accuracy?

A) Includes weapon focus and emotional arousal affecting memory retention. (Correct)
B) Lack of sleep and diet.
C) Prior knowledge of the perpetrator.
D) The eyewitness's personal beliefs.

Which psychological principle states that memory accuracy improves only up to a medium level of emotional arousal, and then performance decreases with further arousal?

A) Yerkes-Dodson law (Correct)
B) Easterbrook hypothesis
C) Encoding specificity
D) Fading affect bias

According to this hypothesis, excessive emotional arousal can narrow an individual's focus of attention, thereby negatively impacting their overall memory for an event's details. What is this hypothesis called?

A) Easterbrook hypothesis (Correct)
B) Yerkes-Dodson law
C) Weapon focus
D) Fading affect bias

What common issue frequently affects eyewitness accounts, where witnesses tend to be inaccurate in their assessment of how long a crime event lasted?

A) Time estimation bias (Correct)
B) Inattentional blindness
C) Change blindness
D) Source errors

When an individual accurately remembers a piece of information but attributes it to the wrong origin or context, what type of memory error has occurred?

A) Source errors (Correct)
B) Misinformation effect
C) Unconscious transference
D) Memory reconstruction

What phenomenon refers to the difficulty people often experience when trying to recognize individuals from a different racial or ethnic group compared to recognizing those from their own?

A) Cross-race identification problem (Correct)
B) Own-age bias
C) Face inversion effect
D) Super-recognizers difficulty

The significantly increased difficulty in recognizing familiar faces when they are displayed upside down, compared to other inverted objects, is known as the:

A) Face inversion effect (Correct)
B) Cross-race identification problem
C) Prosopagnosia
D) Verbal overshadowing effect

What is the structured interview process designed to assist eyewitnesses in recalling more information, while also minimizing the incorporation of misinformation, often by encouraging mental reinstatement of context?

A) Cognitive Interview (Correct)
B) Standard police interview
C) Hypnosis recall
D) Brain fingerprinting

Which principle of memory retrieval states that the likelihood of recalling information is enhanced if the cues or context present during retrieval match those present during the original encoding of the memory?

A) Encoding specificity (Correct)
B) Retrieval inhibition
C) Permastore
D) Fading affect bias

The phenomenon where the act of recalling one memory can momentarily or partially hinder the ability to retrieve another related memory is known as:

A) Retrieval inhibition (Correct)
B) Repression
C) Source error
D) Forgot-it-all-along effect

Regarding the use of hypnosis for memory recall in forensic settings, what is a significant concern?

A) Hypnotized individuals may become more susceptible to misleading information. (Correct)
B) Hypnosis guarantees complete and accurate memory recall.
C) Hypnosis primarily helps in recovering repressed traumatic memories.
D) Hypnosis has no effect on memory susceptibility.

What are the techniques used to measure memory recognition at a neurological level, often through electroencephalography (EEG) patterns in response to familiar stimuli?

A) Brain fingerprinting (Correct)
B) Lie detection
C) Polygraph testing
D) Cognitive Interview analysis

In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, what is the unconscious psychological defense mechanism that blocks traumatic or anxiety-provoking memories from conscious awareness?

A) Repression (Correct)
B) Amnesia
C) Retrieval inhibition
D) Suppression

What term refers to the ongoing discussion and controversy surrounding the validity of memories that resurface after a long period, questioning whether they are genuinely repressed or constructed through suggestion?

A) Recovered memory debate (Correct)
B) False memory syndrome
C) Infantile amnesia argument
D) Autobiographical memory controversy

What type of evidence for the phenomenon of repression often involves personal accounts claiming the recovery of forgotten traumatic memories, frequently subject to skepticism due to lack of objective verification?

A) Anecdotal evidence for repression (Correct)
B) Experimental manipulations of repression
C) Clinical case studies
D) Neurological findings

Research studies attempting to model psychological repression experimentally have sometimes indicated what about negative information?

A) Studies indicating that negative information is recalled more after a delay (e.g., directed forgetting paradigms). (Correct)
B) Negative information is permanently forgotten immediately after encoding.
C) Negative information is more easily recalled than positive information.
D) Repression is purely a subconscious protective mechanism that cannot be experimentally replicated.

What is a common observation about how lost memories may resurface, often leading to the 'recovered memory' discussion?

A) Memories may resurface when emotionally triggered, not necessarily repressed in the Freudian sense. (Correct)
B) Memories only recover through lengthy therapeutic hypnosis sessions.
C) Memory recovery is always sudden and complete.
D) Recovered memories are inherently more accurate than continuously accessible memories.

When an individual experiences a recollection occurring later in life, perceiving old memories as new or viewed in a new context, without recognizing they had prior access to it, it is known as the:

A) Forgot-it-all-along effect (Correct)
B) Déjà vu
C) Jamais vu
D) Flashbulb memory recall

What type of memory refers to an individual's recollection of personal experiences and events that have occurred throughout their own lifespan?

A) Autobiographical memory (Correct)
B) Collective memory
C) Semantic memory
D) Working memory

What phenomenon describes the unusually high rate of recollection for personal experiences and significant life events that occurred during one's late teens and early twenties?

A) Reminiscence bump (Correct)
B) Infantile amnesia
C) Flashbulb memory
D) Fading affect bias

An organized and coherent account of one's life, integrating key episodic events, personal experiences, and a sense of self-identity over time, is best described as a:

A) Life narrative (Correct)
B) Working self
C) Autobiographical timeline
D) Flashbulb memory compilation

Which concept in autobiographical memory refers to how personal knowledge about oneself is accumulated, organized, and retrieved, acting as a dynamic and goal-driven system?

A) Working self (Correct)
B) Self-schema
C) Life narrative
D) Autobiographical knowledge base

What term is used to describe a particularly detailed, vivid, and seemingly accurate memory of a significant and often emotional, surprising, or consequential public event?

A) Flashbulb memory (Correct)
B) Repressed memory
C) Autobiographical memory
D) Permastore memory

The tendency for the emotional intensity associated with negative memories to decrease faster than that associated with positive memories over time is known as the:

A) Fading affect bias (Correct)
B) Reminiscence bump
C) Repression
D) Illusion of truth

What condition describes individuals who possess an extraordinary and often involuntary ability to recall nearly every detail of their personal past, including specific dates and events?

A) Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) (Correct)
B) Savant syndrome
C) Photographic memory
D) Severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM)

What term describes a condition characterized by significant and pervasive difficulty in recalling or re-experiencing one's own autobiographical experiences, often despite intact semantic memory?

A) Severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) (Correct)
B) Infantile amnesia
C) Focal retrograde amnesia
D) Fugue state

Which dissociative disorder involves amnesia for personal identity, often accompanied by unplanned travel or wandering away from one's usual surroundings?

A) Fugue state (Correct)
B) Focal retrograde amnesia
C) Repression
D) PTSD-related amnesia

What type of amnesia involves a loss of autobiographical memories extending backward in time from the injury or disease, but without a loss of personal identity or everyday semantic knowledge?

A) Focal retrograde amnesia (Correct)
B) Fugue state
C) Infantile amnesia
D) Anterograde amnesia

This symptom, often associated with trauma or dissociative states, refers to distinct periods of time during which an individual has no recollection, ranging from hours to months. What is it known as?

A) Gaps in memory (Correct)
B) Infantile amnesia
C) Repression
D) Deja vu

Which anxiety disorder is characterized by intrusive flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance behaviors, and persistent anxiety following exposure to a traumatic event?

A) Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Correct)
B) Dissociative amnesia
C) Fugue state
D) Generalized anxiety disorder

What is the common inability of adults to remember specific events or experiences from their earliest childhood, typically encompassing ages 0-3 years?

A) Infantile amnesia (Correct)
B) Reminiscence bump
C) Focal retrograde amnesia
D) Severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM)

From a Freudian psychodynamic perspective, what is the proposed explanation for infantile amnesia?

A) Freudian belief that unpleasant early memories are repressed. (Correct)
B) Underdevelopment of the brain's memory structures.
C) Lack of self-concept in early childhood.
D) Early memories did not form durable traces.

Which explanation for infantile amnesia posits that the underdevelopment of specific brain regions and the central nervous system during early childhood affects the encoding and retrieval of long-term memories?

A) Neurological explanation of infantile amnesia (Correct)
B) Psychodynamic view of infantile amnesia
C) Cognitive development theory
D) Social-cultural theory

The research by Bahrick and colleagues extensively investigated the robust and long-lasting retention of what type of information over many decades, often after individuals leave high school?

A) Long-lasting retention of personal information post high school, such as names and faces of classmates. (Correct)
B) The development of infantile amnesia.
C) The accuracy of flashbulb memories.
D) The effects of misinformation on eyewitness testimony.

What pattern typically describes the shape of the retention curve for recall over time?

A) Proportion of retained information decreases sharply initially then levels off. (Correct)
B) Proportion of retained information increases steadily over time.
C) Retention remains constant, then drops sharply.
D) Retention fluctuates unpredictably over time.

What term describes the long-term memory stability that occurs after an initial period of forgetting, where information appears to be retained indefinitely, generally after about 3-5 years?

A) Permastore (Correct)
B) Flashbulb memory
C) Working memory
D) Short-term memory

Which foundational study is credited with defining and investigating 'flashbulb memories' as vivid recollections of significant, emotional, and often publicly relevant events?

A) Brown & Kulik (1977) study (Correct)
B) Loftus & Palmer (1974) study
C) Neisser & Harsch (1992) study
D) Bahrick's long-term memory studies

What is a key issue identified when evaluating the accuracy of flashbulb memories over time?

A) Initial recall often not verified; confidence does not guarantee accuracy. (Correct)
B) Flashbulb memories are always perfectly accurate and resistant to decay.
C) Flashbulb memories are easily repressed and recovered.
D) Flashbulb memories primarily capture emotional details, not factual ones.

Which study critically re-examined the accuracy of flashbulb memories by comparing initial accounts with recollections two years after an event (e.g., the Challenger disaster)?

A) Neisser & Harsch (1992) study (Correct)
B) Brown & Kulik (1977) study
C) Loftus & Palmer (1974) study
D) Bahrick's long-term memory studies

What cognitive bias describes the phenomenon where repeated exposure or familiarity with a statement, even if false, increases one's belief in its truthfulness?

A) Illusion of truth (Correct)
B) Confirmation bias
C) Demand characteristics
D) Misinformation effect

What concept refers to the failure to detect obvious changes in a visual stimulus, often occurring when attention is implicitly or explicitly diverted?

A) Change blindness (Correct)
B) Inattentional blindness
C) Verbal overshadowing effect
D) Weapon focus

What is the subjective sensation of having previously experienced a current situation, event, or sensation, even though it is occurring for the first time?

A) Déjà vu (Correct)
B) Jamais vu
C) Tip of the tongue phenomenon
D) Forgot-it-all-along effect

What is the psychological experience characterized by a feeling of eeriness and unfamiliarity in a familiar situation or when encountering a familiar person or object, despite knowing it is familiar?

A) Jamais vu (Correct)
B) Déjà vu
C) Tip of the tongue phenomenon
D) Focal retrograde amnesia

The temporary inability to retrieve a piece of information from memory that one is certain they know, often accompanied by a feeling that the information is 'just out of reach,' is known as:

A) Tip of the tongue phenomenon (Correct)
B) Jamais vu
C) Source error
D) Retrieval inhibition