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Stress and Arousal (Power Point)

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Memory for Emotional Events

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Schooler, J.W., Eich, E. Memory for Emotional Events. Memory in Life, 379-388.


        Schooler et al article on memory for emotional events is an excellent article that provides an introduction into the relationship between stress and eyewitness identification.  There are many topics that this article discusses including: central vs. peripheral events, lab vs. real life experiments, flashbulb memories, and repressed memories.
        Schooler et al bring up the point that in many experiments, they see that witnesses are more likely to accurately identify central event details than peripheral event details.  The problem with experiments testing the effects of stress on memory in a lab is that lab conditions cannot completely replicate the exact stress conditions in real life.  This causes researcher to believe that lab experiments are not accurate.  Although they might not be completely accurate, they are still relative to the situation and have mostly the same outcome. The next topic discussed is flashbulb memories.  Flashbulb memories are basically memories that you remember as if someone took a picture and you remember all of the details, often very accurately and vividly.  To put in perspective, think about the details surrounding you on 9/11.  Most people can say that they know exactly who they were with and where.  These memories are often speculated because researchers do not know if those memories were in fact true or just something that was put in your memory by something else (media, family, friends, etc.)  The last idea that is brought up comes from the old ideas of Freud stating that traumatic events are often kept out of a person's awareness.  Often times this happens is sexual abuse cases.  These memories can also be recovered after an event by sometimes using psychoanalysis or hypnosis.

        To sum up this article, there are too many complex interactions and multiple variables that a researcher needs to study when finding the correlation between stress and eyewitness identification memory.

 

Summary by Kelli

organ, C. A., Hazlett, G., Doran, A., Garrett, S., Hoyt, G., Thomas, P. et al. (2004). Accuracy of eyewitness memory for persons encountered during exposure to highly intense stress. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 27, 265­279.

        Morgan et al. article provided one of the best experiments a researcher could do to study the effects of stress and arousal on memory.  Morgan and his researchers were able to ethically use physical threats on their participants because it took place at a military survival camp.
        Basically, the experiment required the participants to be interrogated at both a high and low stress condition. Then the participants were asked to view a photo array, a live lineup, and a sequential photo lineup.  The participants were then asked to identify the interrogator out of the lineup.  Results showed that overall eyewitness accuracy in subjects was better for low stress conditions than subjects in high stress conditions.  Accuracy was also higher in the cued photos and when showed the sequential photo lineup.
        Overall, this experiment showed that there were a large number of the participants that were unable to identify their interrogator, even after thirty minutes of looking at them. Of course there are other ideas for further research.  Recent studies have shown that consolidation of memory may occur over a number of days after a stressful event, so it would be interesting if researchers can find more exact time variables.  Also, before and after tests should be taken on the levels of stress and also facial recognition tests to see in fact if stress really did have an effect on their memory. Lastly is more research on how sleep and the amount of sleep effects the way memories are stored.
 
Summary by Kelli
Deffenbacher, K. A., Bornstein, B. H., Penrod. S. D, & McGorty, E. K. (2004). A meta-analytic review of the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory. Law and Human Behavior, 28, 687-706.

        Deffenbacher et al. compiled an excellent Meta Analysis on how stress effects memory.  In his article he stresses how important research on stress is because witnessing a crime almost always generates a stress response.
        Deffenbacher and his researchers basically put together many articles by other researchers and on other experiments.  They wanted to find a commonality between all of the articles to see whether there was a negative, positive, or neutral trend on stress effecting memory.  Deffenbacher et al found that high levels of stress negatively impact both accuracy of eyewitness identification and accuracy of recall of crime related details. Although he did find this trend, it still does not answer the question on if stress is entirely a positive, negative, or neutral effect on memory.  Over 30 years of data still has not brought a clear picture to what kind of effect happens and researchers are still currently studying these effects.
        Overall, Deffenbacher et al article states that stress has a negative impact on eyewitness identification.  Some of the limitations including individual differences in the witness are an interesting and beneficial way of answering some questions about the effects of stress.  Testing a participant's trait anxiety, specific fears, physiological reactivity, personality, and level of neuroticism will help experiments results more accurate. Experimental manipulations like arousal mode of attention regulation or activation mode is also discussed as an idea of further research.
 
Summary by Kelli