Eggs, Milk, Butter, And . . . Darn It.
New research confirms two things. First, I'm not the only one who keeps forgetting that fourth thing I need at the grocery store. And second, I probably won't get better at remembering it. Translation for lawyers: if you need jurors to keep more than a handful of facts in working memory, you have to give them special tools.
"A certain number of objects" -- and no more
"We found that every person has the capacity to hold a certain number of objects in his or her mind," said Jeff Rouder of the University of Missouri. He's the co-author with Nelson Cowan of "An assessment of fixed-capacity models of visual working memory," published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Note: that link is to the PNAS abstract. Rouder posts the whole article here at his Missouri bio page, a generous move I hope more scholars follow, but it's extremely heavy going. Unless you love statistics or have time on your hands, the excellent press release is where you want to be.)
It wasn't easy for Rouder and Cowan to confirm our "fixed capacity," because we've developed clever tricks like "chunking" to get the most out of limited memory space:
Rouder said that to remember a series of items, people will use "chunking," or grouping, to put together different items. It can be difficult for someone to remember nine random letters. But if that same person is asked to remember nine letters organized in acronyms, IBM-CIA-FBI, for example, the person only has to use three slots in working memory.
Nine slots, or three?
Our habit of "chunking" information into our memory slots makes it hard for researchers to understand how working memory really works. Until Rouder and Cowan devised an experiment that "wiped out" prior information as the subject went along, no one could tell whether subjects who remembered nine facts had kept each one in a different memory slot, or chunked them into, say, three groups of three.
It doesn't matter to the subjects, of course, how many memory slots they have, as long as they end up remembering nine facts. But it matters a lot to lawyers. If you need jurors to remember nine facts, Rouder and Cowan's research suggests, you've got three or four slots to put them in. If you can't form the facts into meaningful groups, they won't stick.
Remembering to pay attention
In fact, if you can't sort facts into related groups (or give jurors some other tool to remember them, like notetaking) jurors may end up not listening to you at all. The press release goes on:
Working memory is closely related to attention because it requires attention to hold a number of items in mind at once. People with high working memory capacity have more focus. Those with a lower attention span are more easily distracted.
Next time jurors start staring at the ceiling during your client's testimony, don't get mad; think back. Where did you lose them? Likely somewhere around the fifth fact.
___________________
Related topics here include:
(Photo by tracy the astonishing at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracy_the_astonishing/2375583350/; license details there.)
Anne,
This post reminded me of one of the most telling jury "research" events I ever attended.
The Association of Business Trial Lawyers a few years ago staged a day-long mock trial, empanelling one jury of lawyers and one jury of lay people.
The participating jury research people gave all jurors those little meters you dial up for "that's good; it's convincing; I like that witness" and dial down for the opposite.
Two constantly moving graphs were projected above the attorneys and witnesses -- one from the lawyer-jury and one from the witness-jury.
I've attended DOZENS of focus groups, many with those dial-thing-a-ma-gigs (what DO you call them) but this was the most surprising focus group of them all.
Whenever a lawyer made a point or a witness gave a great answer to prove one of the building blocks of the prima facie case or defense, the lawyers charts shot up. And the juries flat-lined. ALL DAY LONG.
When did the jury wake up? Two conditions. One. If the witness answered questions directly and without hesitation, whether they were good or bad for the attorney's case, the jury gave a thumbs up. And if a witness avoided answering or answered evasively, the jury gave them a thumbs down. PERIOD.
No matter how you "prime" the jury for your "case," particularly if it's a business case (this was a trademark theft case)the JURY DOESN'T CARE or doesn't "get" it. How COULD they? It takes most law students an entire semester of law school to "get" the law.
This confirms more or less what I always thought (other than the fact that I was always selling my jury "the case" -- a mistake it seems). The jury gets people, not legal theory.
Love your blog. LOVE your mind! Thanks for sharing.
Vickie
Posted by: Vickie Pynchon | April 29, 2008 at 10:33 AM