Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode "How does your brain perceive the world?"
Psychologist John Wixted says that through the course of a criminal investigation, an eyewitnesses memory can be influenced and altered. But under the right conditions, that testimony can be reliable.
About John Wixted
John Wixted is a distinguished professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. There, he's researched several aspects of human memory. Over the last decade that research has focused on signal detection-based models of recognition memory, as applied to the reliability of eyewitness memory. His earlier work investigated the cognitive mechanisms that underlie recognition memory and how episodic memory is represented in the hippocampus.
He has served as editor-in-chief of the Psychonomic Society's journal and was chief editor of the 2018 edition of Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. In 2011, he received the Howard Crosby Warren Medal, awarded annually by the Society of Experimental Psychologists for outstanding achievement in the field.
This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadioHour@npr.org.
Web Resources
Related TED Talk: How your memory works -- and why forgetting is totally OK
Related TED Video: Are all of your memories real?
Related TED Video: How memories form and how we lose them
Related NPR Links
Short Wave: 'Stealing the past': A spat between twins leads to a theory of disputed memories
Fresh Air : The science of memory (and forgetting)
TED Radio Hour: Memory And The Brain
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