The Case of H.M.

"Everyday is alone by itself" - H.M.

Henry Gustav Molaison, known by the initial H.M., was an American memory disorder patient who was widely studied as he played a vital role in development of theories of link between brain function and memory, and cognitive neuropsychology. He was born on February 26, 1926 and suffered from epilepsy caused by bicycle accident at age of 9. He suffered seizures for several years and finally was sent to Hartford Hospital for treatment. As a result, he lost approximately two-thirds of his hippocampus (two parts of the lower brain), parahippocampal gyrus and amygdale. The surgery was successful in controlling the seizures but H.M suffered severe amnesia; he could not commit new events to long-term memory. He could no longer remember anything for more than few minutes though he could still remember events that happened more than 2 years before the surgery. New experiences were quickly forgotten though he could remember a set of numbers or fact for short while.

The case of H.M. provided about memory impairment and amnesia, and allowed for better understanding of how some areas of brain may be linked to specific processes in memory formation. Problem with H.M wasn’t long-term memory or short-term memory. His personality, IQ and knowledge of the world were intact but the problem was that he lost the ability to convert short-term memories into long-term memories, known as anterograde amnesia (inability to learn new information).

Based on H.M.’s memory loss, scientists formed some hypotheses about memory formation.

1)     Short-term memories are biologically different from long-term memories because they don’t require hippocampus for formation

2)     Long-term memories are stored throughout the brain, but hippocampus is necessary for it to reach long-term storage. Once it is stored, hippocampus sis no longer required. So, hippocampus is not needed for memory maintenance or retrieval after formation.

These hypotheses explain why H.M. could remember events before surgery but not store any new memories after. However, scientists could spot that Henry could perform skill learning by unconscious memory (procedural memory). For H.M., though he couldn’t remember learning such skills, he showed some degree of improvement which means skill learning doesn’t require hippocampus. 

Schema Theory

According to George Santayana, “Memory itself is an internal rumor”. This quote means that memory is malleable as it can be easily adjusted, changed, and distorted. As time goes by, memory might fade away from its fundamental clarity. Cases like Bartlett 1932, Loftus and Palmer 1974, French and Richards 1993 and Ronald Cotton explain schema theory and its assistance and obstacles as to recall memory.

Memory plays a vital role in schema theory. Schema is an organized pattern of thought or behavior. It consists of structured cluster of pre-conceived ideas. It represents some aspect of the world and influence memory as people are more likely to notice things that fit into the schema. So, schema is open to distortion because as information contradicts the schema, it will be perceived as exception. It influence people’s perception in a situation and may stay unchanged. Schema theory emphasizes the fact that memory is influenced by already known facts. Pre-existing information of episodic memory and facts of semantic memory alter memory. 

Experiment of Bartlett involved participants being asked to recall a story called “The War of the Ghosts”. Some participants left out some details and showed some tendency to modify the story to fit their own sense. During recalling of the story, distortion of memory of the story occurred and it became clear that the participants used schema theory to interpret the story. It also became clear that participants tend to throw away details in order to make sense of the information. The conclusion of this experiment sure did explain the schema theory because of its demonstration of human memory that memory can reconstruct following the schema. Bartlett concluded that people follow schema theory or unconscious mental structure that represents one’s general information and through that, memory is influenced.

The experiment of French and Richards directly showed the influence of schemata on memory retrieval. Overview of the experiment is that 3 kinds of participants were shown a clock with roman numeric symbols and the number four was represented with IIII, not IV. They were asked to draw this clock and the conclusion was that part of participants wrote IV whereas the other part wrote IIII just as the clock showed. So, this experiment proved to French and Richards that due to schemata knowledge of roman numerals of the participants, it affected the memory retrieval of the participants.

Loftus and Palmer experiment was to test if language used in eyewitness testimony can affect memory. The experiment consisted of participants who were asked to estimate the speed of car using different forms of questions. They changed the verb in each questions such as smashed, bumped, hit, collided and contacted. They concluded that memory is easily distorted by different techniques of questioning. Information can blend causing inaccurate recall of memory. 

Furthermore, case of Ronald Cotton showed how memory can change and adjust according to the situation. Jennifer Thompson, who have been raped, claimed that Ronald Cotton was her raper but it was found out that she was wrong. Though twice she has stated that Ronald Cotton was the attacker, it wasn't true because her memory adjusted in a way that in her memory, Cotton was her attacker, no one else. Her memory through eyewitness testimony was shown to be erroneous. 

To conclude, memory is malleable, as schema theory both helps and hinders the accurate recall of memory. Based on one’s pre-conceived information based one some situation can affect one’s memory either as an advantage or disadvantage. It might allow one to possess the memory but also to change it extensively.

Review on Case of Ronald Cotton

In 1984, two sets of crimes occurred when a person broke into an apartment, destroyed phone wires, raped a woman and stole her money and belongings. One victim was Jennifer Thompson, who claims that during the attack she studied the attacker’s face to identify him if she survived the attack. In the investigation, Jennifer was certain and chose Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald Cotton was arrested for the rapes and burglary in January 1985. The court sentenced him to life and 54 years.
His family members supported Cotton’s alibi but the jury couldn’t hear evidence that the second victim failed to pick Cotton out of either a photo or police lineup. So, Ronald Cotton was arrested for photo identification and police lineup identification made by one victim and the matching of rubber from Cotton’s shoes to rubber found at one crime scene.
In November 1987, Cotton was retried for both rapes but the second victim decided that he was the attacker. Before the trial, a man in prison called Bobby Poole claimed that he was the one who committed Cotton’s crimes, the court refused to allow this information into trial.
DNA testing proved that sample from one of the victim’s DNA didn’t match to Cotton. So, this showed the court that the attacker was not Ronald Cotton but Bobby Poole who had earlier confessed to the crime. Cotton was officially free from all charges on June 30, 1995.

"I was certain, but I was dead wrong" - Jennifer Thompson

False memory of Jennifer Thompson can be said that her memory of the attacker, Bobby Poole wasn’t reliable to be used as evidence. When Jennifer Thompson saw the photos that the police provided, Thompson probably didn’t have certain idea who her attacker was. She was filled with anger and desire to find her attacker and when she saw Ronald Cotton, she picked him because his facial features were similar to that of Bobby Poole. From this, her memory of attacker modified and adjusted to the picture of Ronald Cotton. When she saw the physical lineup, she picked Ronald Cotton again because by then her memory allowed her to be certainly sure that her attacker was Cotton.
This can be understood because identifying people from other race, ethnicity and nationality is a challenge to people because they are not accustomed to other faces.

Since this occurrence, Jennifer Thompson worked for eyewitness testimony reform because she is now aware that memory can be changed, modified, matched and adjusted. As it is malleable, memories become unclear and vague over time and it can change according to new information and experiences, so eyewitness testimony is not the best evidence that the court could use. So, my conclusion is that this kind of evidence is not useful, reliable, and trustworthy. The way it is used should change, for example, the witness don’t have to have a view of the pictures all at once but shown a picture one by one so that they just say “yes” or “no”. This way, the memory of the witness wouldn't be affected; it will stay neutral.