How Is Your Memory

As human beings we rely on our memories so much in our day to day lives that most things we think about are trivial to us. Tying your shoes or remembering what shoe goes on what foot can be trivial to us, but somewhere in our brains these little tasks are filed somewhere. Our brains file this information, ready to be called upon at a second’s request- and sometimes even quicker. There has to be a hierarchy of what acts take precedence and what mechanism decides to let other actions get unfilled as not necessary.

Three categories of memory for this paper will be “flashbulb”, “eyewitness”, and autobiographical memories are generated and stored in various areas of the brain for a variety of reasons. Many studies have been done on each of these classifications of recurring memories. And of course these studies can only be quantified with a large variety of samples and subjects. The more controversial in my own opinion of these memory classes is the one that deals with eyewitness accounts of prior occurrences. Usually another individual’s freedom or arrest for criminal acts can hinge on whether there is truth and accuracy to a story.

The following web article parlays validity to what I previously said in the above paragraph, 1“In fact, contrary to popular opinion, circumstantial evidence is often extremely reliable. Blood of the victim that makes a DNA match with blood found on the defendant's clothing, credit card records that place the defendant at the scene of the crime, and ballistics analysis that shows a bullet removed from the victim to have been fired from the defendant's gun are all forms of circumstantial evidence. Yet, in the absence of a credible allegation of police tampering, such evidence is usually highly reliable and informative.

At the same time, numerous psychological studies have shown that human beings are not very good at identifying people they saw only once for a relatively short period of time. The studies reveal error rates of as high as fifty percent — a frightening statistic given that many convictions may be based largely or solely on such testimony.” This brief overview of rulings based on a New York Court of Appeals judge somewhat verifies my own personal conclusion.

1 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20010516.html