Scientific Skeptisim and Doubts Psychology Research Paper (Research Paper Sample)

Human Memory Works Like a Tape Recorder or Video Camera, Recording Events Exactly as They Occur-Fact or Fiction
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Introduction
The proposition that the human mind works like a tape recorder or video camera, recording events exactly as they occur is a misleading concept. Experiments that have been done to test the accuracy and reliability of human memory have indicated otherwise. Memory can be created through the five external senses. The sense of touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste form the bases that create memories. However, for our case we will focus on the sense of eyesight and hearing that can be perceived as the tape recorder and video camera. The data collected by the eyes could vary significantly from the actual information owing to the incidences of attention blink. The attention blink could affect the sounds interpreted and recorded by the brain. The detached durations of perceived information and processed data by the brain may produce significantly different memories from the actual occurrences. The paper postulates that human memory does not work like a tape recorder or video camera due to the incidences of attention blink and false memories.
Literature Review
Memories have been utilized significantly as evidence in the courts. However, the use of the memories in the criminal cases has been faced with controversy arising from the increased reliance of the memories and their limitations. Experiments have shown that accurate memory required in the court proceedings is almost impossible in real world. The human memory is laden with false memories and misrepresentations that make its use in the courts questionable (Vanessa, 2013).
Although eyewitness evidence is faced with critical controversies owing to the presence of the false memories surrounding its use, it has been employed effectively and significantly in the courts of law. In most of the cases where the method has been used extensively is in the criminal and civil cases that do not require critical details. In addition, the eyewitnesses have been utilized in the scenarios where audios and visuals are available to augment one another (Vanessa, 2013, p. 6). Eyewitness use in the courts is influenced by false memories fostered by special and normal distracters as well as key characters in the scenes. The witnesses may include unspoken words or omit spoken words that lead to false information and interpretation of the situation (Bauer, Lindsay & Martin, 2013, p. 5).
False memories in the criminal cases indicate the deficiency of the accuracy of the human memory. The accuracy varies significantly with people giving evidence-adding words that were not spoken. The people may omit some key words that were spoken making the interpretation of the evidence misleading. In addition, the structuring of the sentences as were said and the description of the scenes could be ambiguous and lead to misleading information in the case (Vanessa, 2013, p. 5). False experiments are designed to test the accuracy of the human memory. They cover a broad perspective that keys on the ability to recall word for word or to paraphrase what was spoken in a concise manner without losing the contextual and the content meaning. They evaluate the ability of the hearer to remember the key words that fits the scene to their context and content.
The special distracters are employed in false memory investigations to check the accuracy of the human ability to remember. If the human mind worked as a tape recorder or video camera, it would retrieve the memories accurately as were the occurrences observed. In the false memory experiment, the special distracters were words that had a related meaning to the key word or words that the sequence of the experimental words had been developed around. The distracters were words that did not originally appear in the test sequence and the viewer claimed to have seen them (Vanessa, 2013, p. 4). The normal distracters in the false memory experiment were words that were presented to the test subject and were not in the original sequence. In addition, the words did not have the similar meaning to the key word contained in the test sequence. Thirdly, the word could have related pronunciation or constituent letters but their meaning was different from the critical word in the experiment (Bauer, Lindsay & Martin, 2013, p. 3).
False memories influenced significantly the evidence of the eyewitness in the courts of law. The false memories could be vested in the omission of the critical words that made the information given deviate from the original. The false memories included the addition of unspoken words given by the eyewitness that result to misinterpretation of the eyewitness description of the situation. In addition, the eyewitness could describe the scenes through choice of words and sentence structuring that painted the scenes differently from how it was (Brewin, 2012). It is the tendency of the human beings to associate with a specific character in any scenario and view the actions from that person point of view. In the lens of that, the eyewitnesses could be inclined towards describing the actions of one person while forgetting the others. To fill the void, they would make up details and scenes to indicate what the other person was doing that could be quite misleading (Brewin, 2012, p. 715).
The influence of the false memory effect in the eyewitness scenarios can be influenced by the use of special and normal distracters. The distracters can be used to evaluate the accuracy of the information given. In addition, key characters in the scenes can be employed to guide the eyewitness and understand the case in the eyes of the key character. To support their use, the eyewitness can be supported by recorded audios and visuals that augment the descriptions given by the eyewitnesses (Bauer, Lindsay & Martin, 2013, p. 5).
The functioning of the human memory is defined by the ability of the senses to perceive external stimulus. There are many stimuli in the environment that sometimes we are not aware of them. Humans employ attention to filter the stimuli and discard the irrelevant while focusing on the stimuli that are perceived and interpreted to be important (Christin, Olivers & Sander, 2006). However, in ordinary circumstances, there are situations when the stimuli cannot be perceived irrespective of the attention given. A possible incidence when the stimuli cannot be perceived is the incidences where visual prompts are presented in rapid succession. When the period between the successful prompts is small, the receptor fails to perceive the second stimulus. The failure of the receptor to capture the second prod is defined as the attention blink (Mark, Mary & Jan, 2010).
Attention blink can be described as the failure of the human brain to capture a prompt either due to the lack of adequate perception of the eyes to form logical information that can be taken to the brain for analysis or resulting from rapid successful prompts that makes the brain unable to make meaningful interpretation of every successful prod. Attention blink can thus be explained to be lack of attention since the stimulus presented during the attention blink are not perceived or noticed by the human brains (Livesey, Harris & Harris, 2009).  The Livesey and others performed a study in 2009 to evaluate the variation of attention blink and the time between presenting two prods. The study established that there was no significant difference in the response time until the differences were between 300 ms and 500 ms. The time differences below and above the limit did not have any effect of the perception of the second stimuli. On the lower side, the intervals below 200 ms were so fast such that the human brain could not process the successful prods. In the upper side, the time difference was so broad to cause any visual interference to stimulus perception (Livesey, Harris & Harris, 2009, p. 409). 
The interference of the human ability to perceive stimulus through the influence on the attention by attention blink would affect negatively the accuracy and reliability of the human memory. However, the limitations cannot be entirely employed to discredit the notion that human memory works like the video camera or as the tape recorder. The functioning of the human memory could be similar to those of the video recorder but with critical functional differences owing to the event capturing ability (Saini & Yammiyavar, 2013). While the video camera has the sensor triggered by the light waves, the eyesight of the humans has the sensor as the activities of the iodopsin and the central nervous systems. The images of the video camera are captured at a speed of lig...