Case of the Young Eyewitnesses

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July 11th 2012 Psychology 101-701 The Case of the Young Eyewitness There are many questionable aspects of the testimony of this young eyewitness. Though she may believe she is telling the truth and passed the lie detector test with ease there are many psychological errors in her statements that show that she is mistaken, but not intentionally lying. The first line of her statement says, “It happened a few months ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday.” The biggest problem with this part of her testimony is that she says that this situation occurred a few months ago, but she claims to recall it accurately. But due to psychological factors concerning the human mind and memory we know that it isn’t possible to recall a situation that happened over a month ago with complete accuracy. There is what is called a “curve of forgetting” that takes place in our memory as time passes. Typically, once we experience a situation it is stored in our memory. But after 24 hours, if you don’t think about the memory quite a good amount or review the memory on a daily basis your mind will start to forget it. The memory will begin to fade completely and as each day goes by you will gradually remember less and less. On average, by day two after information is stored in our memory we have already began to forget a big chunk of it. To get the most accurate and correct story of what happened in a situation you would have to talk to the people involved within 24 hours of the situation occurring. The witness made this testimony a few months after the situation occurred, which means that parts of her experiences that night could have very well been forgotten. Her recollection of that night is not one hundred percent accurate and should be taken with a grain of salt. The eyewitness makes the statement, “I know that’s the guy because he
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