Have you ever followed along a trial and watched the witnesses give their testimonies? Have you ever noticed that these witnesses that are being used to condemn a person can easily be manipulated to say things about their testimonies when prompted by the questions that they are being asked, either by the defense or prosecution? This happens quite a lot, and I’m sure it is no surprise to you that these same witnesses miss a lot when seeing these crimes play out. Have you also thought about a big event in your own life, such as the attacks on 9/11? Have you thought about the emotions that have played around them? It may be a surprise to you to hear that your memories of these events have probably been manipulated over time.

Many people are called to the stand during a trial. These people are witnesses of what happened and are giving their side of the story. However, their stories are quite often missing huge aspects of the real story. Witnesses often participate in what is known as weapons focus. According to Goldstein, weapons focus is “the tendency to focus attention on a weapon that results in a narrowing of attention.” The problem with this is that this tendency can cause witnesses to stop focusing on what the perpetrator looks like, especially when the weapon in question is a gun that was fired (Stanny & Johnson). These testimonies can also be manipulated through suggestion. This is seen when questions are posed in a certain way so the witness answers in a certain way, and when someone gives a positive response to a wrong or uncertain answer from a witness, causing them to believe their answer was correct. Another aspect that could affect witness testimony is how high emotions are running.

Another area of life where emotions are running quite high are in big moments when people create flashbulb memories. Flashbulb memories are memories created during moments of high emotional activity that have been claimed to be overwhelmingly accurate (Goldstein). The problem with these memories is that they are easily manipulated, kind of in the same way that witness memories can be manipulated. These memories are manipulated by what is known as the narrative rehearsal hypothesis, which simply states that we remember these events because they are rehearsed often after they occurred (Goldstein). Events such as 9/11 that can cause flashbulb memories are often replayed over and over again on the media. This can lead individuals to remember aspects of the memory differently after many years have passed, such as where they first heard about the event, what they heard about the event, and what happened during the event. This increase in variability can cause individuals to believe that flashbulb memories are false recollections of an event.

While most people remember these events quite well, and most of what they remember is actually quite accurate, there is quite a bit of variability for both witness testimonies and flashbulb memories. They are very susceptible to suggestion and emotion. While one wouldn’t say that these testimonies and memories are necessarily false recollections, they are susceptible to being recalled inaccurately because of the variability of these moments. In other words, witness testimonies are to flashbulb memories as flashbulb memories are to false recollections.

References

Goldstein, E. Bruce. Cognitive Psychology . 4th ed., Cengage Learning, 2015.

Stanny, Claudia J, and Thomas C Johnson. “Effects of Stress Induced by a Simulated Shooting on Recall by Police and Citizen Witnesses.” American Journal of Psychology, 2000, pp. 359–386.

Think back to your earliest memory. What is it? For me, my earliest memory is one that occurred when I was about 4 years old when I went fishing with my grandfather (nothing extraordinary happened, and I was not very good at it because I always talked, but I still remember this event). For others, this memory may be even further back than my own; some individuals can remember as far back as when they were 3 years old!

Your first memory is stored in what is called your long-term memory. Long-term memory is defined by Goldstein as “the system that is responsible for storing information for long periods of time” (p 152). There are two different types of memories: episodic and semantic memories. Episodic memories are “memories for specific personal experiences, involving mental time travel back in time to achieve a feeling of reliving the experience” and semantic memories are “memory for facts” (Goldstein, p 164). Not only does long-term memory store things from when you were 3 or 4 years old (episodic memories), it also can recall information and events from 30 seconds and 5 minutes ago (semantic memories)! This obviously goes to show that our long-term memory has a large storage capacity, but just how large is this capacity?

Some individuals argue this capacity is unlimited, while others see many problems with such statement. When you think about the capacity of this memory, many can say it is limited to what you can remember up until the age you are currently. However, because your age is always going up and you are always learning new things, wouldn’t this, in a way, mean that our long-term memory storage capacity is indeed unlimited?

Personally, I see both sides, and it seems to me that both of these have some element of truth to them; however, I would have to agree that there is an unlimited amount of storage in our long-term memory. It would seem there is an unlimited amount of space for memories in your long-term memory because as you grow you learn new things and commit them to memory, but, at the same time, you can never remember past your first memory, so that would seem to limit the storage capacity. In my opinion, your first memory is just the beginning of what you have started to store, rather than proof that our long-term memory is limited. When you have unlimited storage for something, you must first have to have something to store into this storage, and that then is known as your starting point, rather than a limitation. Long-term memory I feel works the same way, your first memory is just a starting point, rather than a limitation to the storage of your memory.

Resources

Eakin, M. C. (2007). The history of Latin America: collision of cultures(1st ed.). Palgrave MacMillan, p. 152, 164.

Everyday in our lives, we hear or see airplanes flying overhead, so how can airplanes doing something as normal as flying be examples of the Gestalt Laws of Perception? The first way to make this happen is, instead of having just one airplane, have a group of them. As you can see in the image below, there are many ways our minds could be perceiving these airplanes. If we look closer, one can go into further detail about this phenomenon.

The first Gestalt Law of Perception is proximity. This law states that objects that are close to each other tend to be grouped together by our brains (Cherry & Gans, 2017). As you can see in the example image below, the airplanes are flying in close proximity to each other, so we perceive them as a group rather than individual airplanes.

Image depicting airplanes flying (Schenker, 2014).

The law of similarity is the second law and states that objects with characteristics that are similar to each other are grouped together by our brains (Cherry & Gans, 2017).  The airplanes show this because every single one of the airplanes are the same shape and same color, so our brains perceive them as a group, as compared to single airplanes.

Two more laws are the laws of continuity- this law says that objects that form a straight or curved line get grouped together (Cherry & Gans, 2017)- and the law of connectedness, which states that connected objects tend to be grouped together (Soegaard, 2018). These are not shown by the airplanes themselves, but by the contrails that follow them. These contrails form lines behind the planes (law of continuity), and since these lines do not touch so we see each one as a separate trail (law of connectedness).

The Gestalt Laws of Perception also have a law called the law of common fate. The law of common fate states that objects that are moving towards the same direction are perceived as a group (Schenker, 2014). In the case of the airplanes, we perceive them as a group because they are all flying in the same direction.

The final law is the law of pragnanz. This law explains that no matter what is going on in our environments, our minds tend to see the most simple explanation of the stimulus (Cherry & Gans, 2017). In the image above of the airplanes, we simply see a group of airplanes that are flying, rather than columns or rows of airplanes flying.

This image of flying airplanes is the perfect example of the Gestalt Laws of Perception. It allows us to see examples of each law and how they happen in everyday life. One can easily find this at any time during their life and use it to show someone what each and every one of these laws means.

Reference List

Cherry, K., & Gans, S. (2017, November 05). Learn the Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization. Retrieved January 24, 2018, from https://www.verywell.com/gestalt-laws-of-perceptual-organization-2795835

Schenker, M. (2014, May 22). Gestalt B2B Web Design Principles – Part 4: Common Fate. Retrieved January 24, 2018, from https://www.market8.net/b2b-web-design-and-inbound-marketing-blog/gestalt-b2b-web-design-principles-%E2%80%93-part-4-common-fate

Soegaard, M. (2018, January 3). Laws of Proximity, Uniform Connectedness, and Continuation – Gestalt Principles (2). Retrieved January 24, 2018, from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/laws-of-proximity-uniform-connectedness-and-continuation-gestalt-principles-2