Biographical Elizabeth F. Loftus was born Elizabeth Fishman on October 16th, 1944. She grew up in Bel Air, California with her parents Sidney and Rebecca Fishman, and had a high interest in fictionalized crime books (Zagorski, 2005). When Elizabeth was 14, her mother Rebecca drowned in a swimming pool. To cope with her loss, she kept a diary that contained her thoughts. Interesting enough, she would write her thoughts onto a separate piece of paper that she would attach in her diary, and remove it if her future boyfriend was to ask to read her diary (Loftus, 2017). In 1962, Elizabeth started her undergraduate studies at the University of California in Los Angeles as a major in mathematics (Born, 1997). During her undergrad year, she took an …show more content…
introductory to psychology and discovered her interest in psychology. Elizabeth then received her Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and psychology in 1966 (Born).
She further her education by going to Stanford University to study mathematical psychology and received her Master of Arts in 1967 and her Ph. D in 1970 (Born). Elizabeth married her former Stanford mentee Geoffrey Loftus and had 23 lasting years of marriage. Unfortunately, due to Elizabeth’s “workaholic ways,” they divorced in 1991 but remained good friends (Loftus). During her early years at Stanford and under the wings of Richard Atkinson, Elizabeth finished her master dissertation addressed as structural variables that determine problem-solving difficulty on a computer-based Teletype (Loftus, 2017). Following her Ph.D. degree, Loftus began working for the New School for Social Research in New York in 1970 and collaborated with social psychologist, Jonathan Freeman (Zagorski, 2005). Her early research with Freeman was the organization of semantic information into long-term memory, but after moving to the University of Washington in 1973, she wanted to focus more on a practical application of semantic information (Zagorski). Elizabeth Loftus was able to obtain research funding from the US Department of Transportation, and soon devoted her career to a forensic application: the study of eyewitness testimony (Loftus). In 1974
Loftus published an article in Psychology Today to discuss the relevance of psychological science to a murder trial. Her article stated that different eyewitness’ memory played a critical role in the outcome of cases (Loftus). After her article, lawyers began to contact Loftus to ask her to consult with them on cases. She even had judges ask her to teach educational seminars on the topic of the reliability of eyewitness evidence (Zagorski). Today, Elizabeth Loftus is a distinguished professor at the University of California in Irvine teaching social ecology, law, and cognitive science (Loftus, 2017). She has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, and in 2002 was the highest ranking women in the Review of General Psychology’s list of the 100 most influential psychological researchers of the 20th century (Zagorski). Elizabeth Loftus has testified in over 200 trials as an expert witness on the unreliability of eyewitness testimonies. She was involved in many cases such as the McMartin preschool trial, the O.J. Simpson trial, the prosecution of the officers accused of beating Rodney King, the Oklahoma City bombing case, and the trial of mass murderer Ted Bundy (“Elizabeth F. Loftus,” 2003; Zagorski, 2005). Loftus published over 19 books and nearly 200 articles (Born, 1997). Loftus work has become recognized throughout the world. Due to her controversial positions concerning the accuracy of memory and her opinion that many recovered “memories” are actually false, Loftus has received harsh criticism from some individuals in the academic community and intense harassment from many members of the public (Zagorski, 2005)
The author, Elizabeth Brown Pryor, wrote her biography of Clara Barton with the intent to not only tell her life, but to use personal items (diary and letters) of Clara’s found to help fill information of how Clara felt herself about incidents in her life. Her writing style is one that is easy to understand and also one that enables you to actually get pulled into the story of the person. While other biographical books are simply dry facts, this book, with the help of new found documents, allows Pryor to give a modern look on Barton’s life. This book gave a lot of information about Ms. Barton while also opening up new doors to the real Clara Barton that was not always the angel we hear about. Pryor’s admiration for Ms. Barton is clear in her writing, but she doesn’t see her faults as being a bad thing, but rather as a person who used all available means to help her fellow soldiers and friends along in life.
Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes was the first African American women to earn a PH.D in mathematics. She was the first and only child of William S. Lofton, a dentist and financier, and Lavinia Day Lofton. Euphemia Lofton Haynes was born Martha Euphemia Lofton on September 11, 1890 in Washington D.C. In 1917 she married her childhood sweetheart Dr.Harold Appo Haynes. They knew each other very well, as they grew up in the same neighborhood when they were teenagers. They both attended, and graduated from M St. High school. Her husband graduated from M St high school in 1906, a year earlier than she did. During their marriage they were highly focused on their careers, and didn’t have any children.
Margaret Garner, an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America, was born on June 4, 1834, at Maplewood plantation in Boone County, Ky. Her parents were slaves belonging to the
Racism through the years has provided places around the world with a shameful past that even today, racial reconciliation is still only in its beginning phase. Legends such as Rosa Park, Martin Luther king, and Malcolm X sacrificed their own life daily to pave a brighter future for America. However there is only so much people can do to change the ways of the world, the rest is up to the moral ethics of everyday citizens. The novel, Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, makes me question society in the past and present. If today; years after racism was said to be over, two people can not move on from their horrid past, how is the rest of the world supposed to? Recent events have proven that racism still exists and will always exist
Queenie Volupides had an argument with her husband the night of his death and went to the country club. At 1 am she left the country club and invited her friends over for another drink. Queenie’s friends got there 10 minutes after she did. She claimed that Arthur fell down the stairs going to get another drink. The autopsy report showed that Author died from a wound in the back of his head, and that he was drunk. I believe that
...She died as one of the most respected women in American history on May 21, 1935. She never married and apparently never had a romantic relationship with a man. Today, modern scholars debate whether or not Addams ever had an intimate relationship with Mary Rozet Smith or other women at Hull House, but the question has never been definitively resolved.
He was a summer intern at the law business she worked for, and she was assigned as a mentor to him. They eventually fell in love and married in October 1992. She is a very committed mother and considers her family her first priority.
Elizabeth Blackburn’s adolescence was similar to that of other girls growing up in the 1960s. She followed current trends in fashion, listened to the Beatles, and had siblings whom she argued with but also admired. Additionally, she was also a model student who consistently achieved high marks in academics. Being the fifth of seven children, her siblings considered her the most self-motivated of the bunch; worrying less about pleasing others and more about independent success.
before moving on to work as a commercial artist and a teacher. She married a fellow artist
Knowledge of how long-term memory works is crucial to structuring the process of a trial, especially in terms of how soon after an incident a trial can be held or what witnesses are reliable or not. In different articles written by psychologists, legal officials, and attorneys
Elizabeth Loftus, is a psychologist, mainly concerned with how subsequent information can affect an eyewitness’s testimony. Loftus has focused on misleading information in both the difference in wording of questions and how these questions can influence eyewitness testimony. This research is important because frequently, eyewitness testimony is a crucial element in criminal proceedings. Throughout Loftus’s career she has found a witness’s memory is highly flexible and subject to being influenced. The classic study by Loftus and Palmer (1974), illustrates that eyewitness testimony can be influenced by leading questions and ultimately proved unreliable.
Valentine, T., & Maras, K. (2011). The effect of cross-examination on the accuracy of adult eyewitness testimony. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 554-561. doi: 10.1002/acp.1768
Psychological research shows, a witness's memory of details during the commission of a crime, has a high probability of containing significant errors. In response to these findings, the question is should witness testimony still be permissible in a court of law? Obviously, the answer to this question is an important one and is debatable. Consequently, what we know is many innocent people go to jail due to eyewitness misidentification. Therefore, it is imperative that all defense attorneys thoroughly evaluate the validity of eyewitness recollection events. Any defense attorney who does anything less is ignoring the findings of the psychological community and its’ study of how the brain functions. As a result, an intense analysis of an
To our knowledge, eyewitness memory could be simply defined as a person’s episodic memory that he or she has been a witness of a certain criminal event. However, psychologists have discovered that the confidence of memory recall of eyewitness, would increase significantly by asking them the simple question, (e.g., Do you see the perpetrator below the following pictures?), even though the feedback
Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie.