Introduction Memory is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information in the part of the brain called the hippocampus. Commonly seen in the courtroom, witnesses tend to recall past events from implanted memories. These memories are artificial, but people often recall details of an event when new information is supplied. It has been found that events are often reconstructed when an event is recalled. A study by E. Loftus (1975) supports this theory when she conducted a delayed memory test. Loftus and her partner focused on eyewitness testimonies by the wording of questions. This test sought to determine if participants would accept information that it introduced in the form of a question when being asked about the details in a video about a class being disrupted by eight anti war demonstrators. This video segment was shown to forty participants before being given a questionnaire of twenty questions that ask about the film clip. Nineteen of those questions were the same, but one half of the participants were asked one different question than the other half. The participants returned …show more content…
Their original memory had been modified when the new information implemented what they were able to recall. Thereafter, the group of participants that were asked the question including a supposed twelve demonstrators wrote they saw an average of 8.85. The group that got the question including a supposed four demonstrators answered with an average of 6.40. As one can see, the number that was made up was close to the average number they answered with. In this experiment, the independent variable is the two different forms of a question and the dependent variable is the response that the participants give that results from the implanted