What are your thoughts on the content of this discussion below as it relates to cultural and social influence? Do you agree or disagree? Why
This person will discuss the role of cultural and social influence on two of the following: eyewitness testimony, memory distortion, source memory, or recovered memories. In addition this person will discuss why is it sometimes important to forget what has been learned.
This is their discussion:
I have always found eyewitness testimony very interesting. During my law enforcement career, I knew I had to be very careful when questioning witnesses, especially when I became an investigator. I made it standard practice to question witnesses separately to avoid "contaminating" another witness's statement and to document everything that was said during the interview. This helped to eliminate some of the misleading information that Whitman (2011) referred to in our text. From a cultural and social standpoint, eyewitness testimonies can be influenced by misleading information, which "alters the accuracy of recall for specific details of the original event" (Whitman, 2011).
Recovered memories are another area of interest to me. I always contemplated whether someone could actually block out a memory, only to have something trigger it later in life. How accurate could those memories be if so? It appears that there is reason for concern here. According to Whitman (2011), many researchers and professional agencies have cautioned practitioners about the dangers of believing in repressed memories and memory enhanced techniques, even calling the practice of recovering memories unethical behavior.
I have learned that forgetting is actually a necessary part of the memory process. When we forget, it is actually a process of replacing one memory with another. This is how we gain additional knowledge as learners. What we have learned previously is enhanced with new information, which essentially replaces the old.