Memory is consistently learning over time. Verbal labels inherently affect memory as is seen in the variance of responses from how a question is phrased in regards to an event. This is a response paper on the article, ’Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction, An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory’, and the tie-in with learnt concepts.
Summary of the Article
The above article is written by Elizabeth F. Loftus and John C. Palmer, in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior from the University of Washington. In the article, Loftus and Palmer seeks to uncover the influence of verbal labels on how accurately people remember details of a complex happening or event. In particular, the authors research on how well people remembered the numerical details of an accident such as, how fast, the duration it takes, the speed of the subject in question, and how these factors affect representation of other details. They conducted an experiment where test subjects are shown short clips of accidents and given questionnaires with different verbs denoting the happenings.
The questions authors used in the experiment included how fast the vehicles were travelling when they smashed, hit, bumped, collided or contacted each other (Loftus " Palmer 586). This also led to a further question on whether any of them saw any broken glasses at the scene of the accident. From Loftus and Palmer’s findings, when the word smashed was used, the speed estimates tend to be higher than when a verb such as hit or bumped was used in the question. Moreover, a larger percentage of the test subjects with the verb smashed used reckoned that there was broken glass at the scene than whose question indicated hit or bumped. Witnesses to an accident were generally poor in judging how fast the vehicles were moving but this was overemphasized when different verbs were used.
Article Tie-in with Learnt Concepts
Similar to the concepts learnt in class, the test subjects in the article, after being shown the clips of the accident, their iconic memory registered the image while their echoic memory registered the sound produced at the accident. Immediate encoding of the information occurred at that point. The information received then underwent a processing step where visual encoding occurred. Thus, the concepts learn and the article confirms that there are two types of information that enter into one’s memory: one is their general perception of the original event and the external influence or information supplied after the event. In terms of testing, the test subjects would then retrieve the information they registered and fill the questionnaire.
From the concept of flashback memory, vivid and clear reconstruction of an event where one can remember all the details occurs. This is where the choice of words to describe an occurrence has the potential to result in bias recognition and representation of details from the event. Consequently, influence of verbal tags on recognition memory and for visually presented impulse can be seen in the way the test subjects associate the verb smash with a much larger and complex accident (Loftus " Palmer 586).
The experiment can be accounted for by the terms of contextually generated expectations for different verbs in relation to the intensity attached to each. As previously learnt in class, the effects of labeling on registering information and the recognition of schematic faces are more when bias and closed questions are used to describe or inquire about an event. Reconstruction and memory representation on an event therefore, consists of what was registered in memory along with the verbal tag that was attached to it (Loftus " Palmer 587). However, the exact effect of labeling on reconstruction depends on what the test demands; the nature of test, the impulse to be reconstructed and the instructions given during the visual representation.
Conclusion
From assessing the information above, the answers given in a specific occurrence inherently depend on the type of question asked and specifically the verb used in the question.
Works Cited
Loftus, Elizabeth F., and John C. Palmer. "Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of The Interaction Between Language and Memory". Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, vol 13, no. 5, 1974, pp. 585-589. Elsevier BV, doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(74)80011-3.
