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False Memories: Jennifer Thompson And Ronald Cotton

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Majority people believe our human memory is like a videotape recorder, record everything what had happened accurately and can play it back over and over again. But actually it’s not. Our memories can be contaminated by others or our past memory and come up with false memory which called misinformation effect. The story of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton shows a great example of memory failure. Jennifer Thompson had mistaken Ronald Cotton with Bobby Poole who is the rapist. When the photo lineup is in front of her, Jennifer pointed Ronald Cotton in the photo lineup and absolutely sure that he is the perpetrator but she’s wrong. She chose the one who looks most like him because under the stress and fear of a traumatic event, the victim

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