Client's Testimony: The Debate Over Memory

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=160 BGCOLOR="#333333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="03cdedc2ddualp.png"> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dr. Wade Silverman, Ph.D"><U><B>Dr. Wade Silverman, Ph.D</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id8.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us"><U><B>Contact Us</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id147.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FAQs"><U><B>FAQs</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Dr. Silverman"><U><B>About Dr. Silverman</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id146.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Great links"><U><B>Great links</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id3.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Mind Reader© archive"><U><B>The Mind Reader© archive</B></U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="03d64643.png"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#666633" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B>Dr. Wade Silverman, Ph.D</B></FONT>    |     <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#0000BF" FACE="Times New Roman" ><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dr. Wade Silverman, Ph.D"><U>home</U></A></FONT></div> <div>                                                   </div> <div> Client's Testimony: The Debate Over Memory</div> <bR> <div> Recently, there has been a raging controversy over the existence of false memory and its potential misuse by lawyers, mental health professionals, and others. Without getting too complicated, let me remind you of what you already know. Memory is not a camera that absorbs images in toto and reflects them back. Rather, it is a human decision-making process that contains human flaws. </div> <div> Memories are formed following three stages: acquisition, retention, and retrieval. In basic terms the acquisition stage involves encoding information onto the neural network. In the retention stage this information is then stored. During retrieval the stored information is accessed for current use. </div> <div> There exists a wide variety of variables that can affect a client's functioning at any or all of these stages, and therefore, the accuracy of the recalled event. During acquisition, memory may be affected by exposure time, stress, violence associated with the event, social expectations, and personal needs and biases. Retention may be affected by strong emotional states, the kinds of questions asked by an interrogator, time itself, the acquisition of post-event information, or by the tendency to "fill in" missing information or "gaps". Retrieval is affected by age, social comformity, the need to reduce uncertainty, and practice.   </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>