Dear TIPSters, At one point during the Brain Fingerprinting segment on 60 minutes, the fact that the subject did not respond to the stimulus "weeds and grass" was used as evidence for the suspect's innocence. The argument went something like this: since the assailant would have had to run through "weeds and grass" when fleeing the crime scene; and since this experience would have been permanently in the memory of the criminal; then by NOT responding, the suspect is "proven" at the "99.99% level" (their words) to be innocent. Besides the obvious logical flaws and concerns about null results (which I would expect my intro. exp. psych. students to be able to identify), the logic assumes that the suspect had never had any other experience with running through "weeds and grass". I would like to conduct an informal poll... How many TIPSters have some memory of having, at some time in their lives, run through "weeds and grass"? I suspect that 99.99% of respondents should respond to that stimulus? If you had this memory, would you have been presumed to be gulity. The implications are extremely frightening (You might say..."arresting"). Another sad part of it is that I bet that guy has more grant money than most of us. And we wonder why we have trouble with students thinking critically in class. It's certainly an up-hill battle isn't it? Happy Holidays (are coming), -S p.s. I would bet that lots of criminals (and non-criminals) would respond to "'weed' and 'grass'" for other reasons as well... -- |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Steven M. Specht, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Psychology Department Utica College of Syracuse University 1600 Burrstone Rd. Utica, NY 13502 (315) 792-3171 "To teach is to learn twice". - Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
