H.M.

A man who went into a brain operation in order to to correct a seizure disorder. However,  due to the operation, he lost the ability to form new memories. What means is that every time he went through the event, it was always new to his memory. He didn't remember what he had done before, even though he had done it. This mans' operation helped scientists understand the biology of learning, memory, and physical dexterity. He did an another experiment on his brain, and this operation somehow, brought back his memories, but did not placed the memories in the exact time order. SO he was confused of the memories. As the book recalls, "A Lifetime without Memory," is the exact definition for the mans life.
From this case scientists learned that memories can be replaced, but you should be very careful about removing, or replacing ones brain functions, or else, it would ruin one of the patients life.

Overview

In class we learned a lot of studies based on psychology.

First of all, Empirical study was one of the schema. It is the effect of schemas on memories. theses schemas the organize info in memory, they can be activated to increase info-processing efficiency- they enable  generation of expectations about objects, events, and people, they regulate behaviour, they are relatively stable and resistant to change.
According to Bartlett (1932), the way the participants recalled the story came under the influence of relevant schematic knowledge in their memory. It also reflects the participants' own culture. Rationalization making the story conform to your cultural expectations.
French and Richards (1993) made a study of influence of schemata on memory retrieval.
We had a study made from French and Richards.

There were 3 conditions:
1.) Participants' were shown the clock and drew from the memory.

2.) participants were told before of what they would draw.
3.) last they had the full view of the clock and drew it.
French and Richards explained this result in terms of schemata knowledge of roman numerals effecting participant memory retrieval.


Finally there was the study done by Loftus and Palmer(1974).
It was a accident where participants were shown from a car crash video.
Then there were several questions done by the participants. However, the most important question was "How fast was the car crash?" In the question there were different types of verbs, which were smashed, collided bumped, and contacted.
The response basically was the bias factors. through this question the verbs of the question will change the participants memory.
there were two types of memories, which were gleamed, and external, which supplies the other facts.
Gleamed theory is the perception of the original text.
These are the subjects that we were basically learning in class, and we had some really fun doing the exact same experiments in the class with Mr. Dougherty.

Cotton's case

EYEWITNESS

This Ronald Cotton case is basically on the importance of eyewitness. Jennifer Thompson, who is a college student lives by herself. While living alone, suddenly one day some raper comes into her room, and he tries to rape her. During the time, she doesn't try to call, but she tries to remember the details of the rapers face. She looks carefully, and studies the rapers face. After the raper goes away, she goes to the police, and then tells exactly what she saw. She tells everything, and the police tries to match up the face. When the police got the face matched up by guessing, they got people that looked alike the matched up photo. They were lined up in front of Jennifer, and she looked closely at the 6 people that were there. She chose one person, who was Ronald Cotton. However, the truth was that he wasn't the one that raped Jennifer Thompson, but he went to jail for 10 years due to eyewitness. After the jailed years, Jennifer and the police found that Ronald Cotton wasn't the one that raped, and Bobby Poole was the one guilty. As can be seen in this case, eyewitness was the important material used for the case. Eyewitness has a definition of someone who has a knowledge about a crime or dramatic event through seeing it firsthand. However, the problem about eyewitness is that it's just doesn't long that long. Also it is said that it is mostly wrong or not even close to the answer the person is reporting within the numerical details. This is a real research about the memories people have when they remember things. I personally don't think using eyewitness is useful in court because as it is said in the research it can't be accurate. Just because you have seen and remembered all the details like Jennifer Thompson, doesn't mean that she remembers the person exactly the same. Also like the case what will happen if the eyewitness went wrong, and a different person goes to jail like Ronald Cotton. Therefore, I think this eyewitness evidence won't be good proving way in court.