{"id":195,"date":"2013-11-21T18:55:19","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T18:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/?post_type=chapter&p=195"},"modified":"2016-11-17T22:38:39","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T22:38:39","slug":"chapter-8-remembering-and-judging","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/chapter\/chapter-8-remembering-and-judging\/","title":{"raw":"9. Remembering and Judging","rendered":"9. Remembering and Judging"},"content":{"raw":"Canada has had its share of memories being introduced into legal cases with devastating results:\u00a0Thomas Sophonow was accused of murdering a\u00a0young waitress who worked in a donut shop in\u00a0Winnipeg, Manitoba.\u00a0Several eyewitnesses testified\u00a0against Sophonow but there were problems with each\u00a0one. For example, the photo array shown to a number\u00a0of witnesses contained a picture of Sophonow, which\u00a0was significantly different than the other men in the\u00a0array.\r\n\r\nDubious allegations of repressed memories forced Michael Kliman, a teacher at\u00a0James McKinney Elementary School\u00a0in Richmond, B.C.,\u00a0\u00a0to endure three trials before his ultimate acquittal. His world came crashing down when he was\u00a0accused of molesting a Grade 6 student some 20\u00a0years earlier, a student who \u201crecovered\u201d her memories 17\u00a0years after the abuse allegedly happened. According to an article in the Vancouver Sun<\/em> (Brook,\u00a01999): \u201cIn 1992, after years of psychiatric treatment,\u00a0she \u2018recovered\u2019 long-lost memories of a year-long\u00a0series of assaults by Kliman and, encouraged by the \u00a0Richmond RCMP, laid charges.\u201d\r\n
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She Was Certain, but She Was Wrong<\/h3>\r\nIn 1984 Jennifer Thompson was a 22-year-old college student in North Carolina. One night a man broke into her apartment, put a knife to her throat, and raped her. According to her own account, Ms. Thompson studied her rapist throughout the incident with great determination to memorize his face. She said:\r\n\r\n\"I studied every single detail on the rapist\u2019s face. I looked at his hairline; I looked for scars, for tattoos, for anything that would help me identify him. When and if I survived.\"\r\n\r\nMs. Thompson went to the police that same day to create a sketch of her attacker, relying on what she believed was her detailed memory. Several days later, the police constructed a photographic lineup. Thompson identified Ronald Cotton as the rapist, and she later testified against him at trial. She was positive it was him, with no doubt in her mind.\r\n\r\n\"I was sure. I knew it. I had picked the right guy, and he was going to go to jail. If there was the possibility of a death sentence, I wanted him to die. I wanted to flip the switch.\"\r\n\r\nAs positive as she was, it turned out that Jennifer Thompson was wrong. But it was not until after Mr. Cotton had served 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit that conclusive DNA evidence indicated that Bobby Poole was the actual rapist, and Cotton was released from jail. Jennifer Thompson\u2019s memory had failed her, resulting in a substantial injustice. It took definitive DNA testing to shake her confidence, but she now knows that despite her confidence in her identification, it was wrong. Consumed by guilt, Thompson sought out Cotton when he was released from prison, and they have since become friends (Innocence Project, n.d.; Thompson, 2000).\r\n\r\nAlthough Jennifer Thompson was positive that it was Ronald Cotton who had raped her, her memory was inaccurate. Conclusive DNA testing later proved that he was not the attacker. Watch this book trailer about the story.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\"""\"<\/a>Watch: \"Picking Cotton: A Memoir of Injustice and Redemption\" [YouTube]<\/a>: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nLGXrviy5Iw\r\n\r\nJennifer Thompson is not the only person to have been fooled by her memory of events. Over the past 10 years, almost 400 people have been released from prison when DNA evidence confirmed that they could not have committed the crime for which they had been convicted. And in more than three-quarters of these cases, the cause of the innocent people being falsely convicted was erroneous eyewitness testimony (Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).\r\n\r\nWatch this video for Lesley Stahl\u2019s\u00a060 Minutes\u00a0segment on this case.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\"""\"<\/a>Watch: \"Eyewitness Testimony\" [YouTube]<\/a>: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=u-SBTRLoPuo\r\n\r\n\u00a0<\/em>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nThe two subjects of this chapter are memory<\/strong>, defined as the ability to store and retrieve information over time<\/em>, and cognition<\/strong>, defined as the processes of acquiring and using knowledge<\/em>. It is useful to consider memory and cognition in the same chapter because they work together to help us interpret and understand our environments.\r\n\r\nMemory and cognition represent the two major interests of cognitive psychologists. The cognitive approach became the most important school of psychology during the 1960s, and the field of psychology has remained in large part cognitive since that time. The cognitive school was greatly influenced by the development of the electronic computer, and although the differences between computers and the human mind are vast, cognitive psychologists have used the computer as a model for understanding the workings of the mind.\r\n
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Differences between Brains and Computers<\/h3>\r\n