Memory in the Courtroom

A person later rates past events more positively than they had actually rated them when the event occurred.

The recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods.

The act of remembering an event is reconstructive and actually changes the original memory.

Exploring the Recovered Memory debate.

Persistence is intrusive, unwelcome, recall, such as occurs in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

There is improved recall of information when the event is congruent with one’s current mood.

The misinformation effect happens when a person’s recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information.

Misattribution of Memory involves source details retained in memory but erroneously attributing a recollection or idea to the wrong source.

The levels-of-processing effect describes memory recall of stimuli as a function of the depth of mental processing.