psychologists--cnn article

[mgadfly]

This morning on CNN.com there is an article discussing punishment to parents that leave a child in the car too long. Part of the article is a quote from a professor at the University of South Florida.

It's easy to forget your keys or that cup of coffee on the roof. But a child?

The awful truth, experts say, is that the stressed-out brain can bury a thought -- something as trite as a coffee cup or crucial as a baby -- and go on autopilot. While researchers once thought the different parts of the brain worked in conjunction with each other, they now realize that different portions dominate at different times.

"The value of the item is not only not relevant in these competing memory systems," says memory expert David Diamond, an associate psychology professor at the University of South Florida. "But, in fact, we can be more complacent because we tell ourselves, 'There's no way I would forget my child."'

I'm working on a case where notice and memory are an important part of the issue (it isn't a criminal case where a parent left a kid in a car) and I'm wondering if anyone here has a good enough understanding of this area of psychology to know if David Diamond's view is supported by science?

Thanks for any help.

[ThunderingHERD]

Originally Posted by mgadfly

This morning on CNN.com there is an article discussing punishment to parents that leave a child in the car too long. Part of the article is a quote from a professor at the University of South Florida.



I'm working on a case where notice and memory are an important part of the issue (it isn't a criminal case where a parent left a kid in a car) and I'm wondering if anyone here has a good enough understanding of this area of psychology to know if David Diamond's view is supported by science?

Thanks for any help.

There are a lot of different issues here. I wouldn't say that we "become more complacent because we tell ourselves, 'There's no way I would forget my child.'" The idea of forgetting the child is never considered at all, so there's no additional weight given to the child. With "prospective memory" (remembering to do something in the future) the important thing is the cues used to trigger the memory. If no cue is encoded for remembering the child then it will be very easy to forget. Lets say everyday I run into the post office for five minutes with my kid in the car--I do it everyday, it's only five minute, so it never occurs to me to encode a cue for remembering to get the kid. Now let's say I run into an old friend in the post office--chances are it's not going to occur to me that I need to be concerned with the kid out in the car.