Legal Research

"Emotion Affects Memory's Reliability - Emotion-driven false memories could directly impact court cases, researchers say"

This post was written by Stephanie WestAllen: "Press release (National Science Foundation):

June 28, 2010

This is your memory. This is your memory on emotion.

Does emotion distort children's memories? Cornell University researchers Chuck Brainerd and Valerie Reyna say yes, and they say emotion-driven distortions or falsifications could directly impact court cases, affecting decisions made by prosecutors, judges and juries about the reliability of child witnesses.

"Emotion is so central to memory in the law," said Brainerd, professor of human development and an adjunct law professor at Cornell. "Determining the conditions in which false memories increase or can be suppressed or eliminated is an urgent question."

In a recent research study, Brainerd and Reyna found that emotion appears to distort both children's and adults' memories, especially when events have a negative emotional charge, such as those associated with crimes..."

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Source: idealawg, 29 June 2010, reproduced with permission of the author.

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on June 30, 2010 (boomark / email).