Mulholland 1

Christopher Mulholland
WR 13300
Erin McLaughlin
November 10 2015
Research Essay Proposal/Exploratory Draft
Part 1: Research Proposal
TOPIC
The effects of Technology on memory.
RESEARCH QUESTION(S)
What happens in the brain when a word is written down? Typed?
How does handwriting affect memory in children?
How has the reliability of memory in the court system changed over the past 40 years?
AUDIENCE & SIGNIFICANCE
The audience of this research paper will be educators, parents, and students who are concerned about
discovering the best ways to learn and aid in the development of their mind/the mind of their child or
student. It will also be significant for those affiliated with the Judicial system. Eyewitness testimonies are
often used and false convictions can come from false memory.
CONTEXT
In education today, schools are moving more and more over to digital means of learning. This has its
benefits, but the psychological benefits of handwriting are lost in many students.
EXHIBIT
To illustrate my discussion of the effect of technology on memory, I plan to focus on the shift from books
and handwriting to digital learning and the psychological effects that come with it. I will also study the
trends in the court system in terms of the reliability of eyewitness testimonies and false identification
statistics.

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KEY SOURCES FOUND SO FAR:

MLA citation

Cutler, Brian L. Conviction of the Innocent Lessons

from Psychological Research. 1st ed. Washington,
D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2012. Web.
Waterman, Amanda, Jelena Havelka, Peter Culmer,
Liam J Hill, and Mark School of Psychology,
University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK School
of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds,
Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK Mon-Williams. "The
Ontogeny of Visual-motor Memory and Its Importance
in Handwriting and Reading: A Developing Construct."
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, 282.1798 (2014): 1.
Michael Risinger, Innocents Convicted: An
Empirically Justified Factual Wrongful Conviction
Rate, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 97
(2007): 761 806.

Murray, Elizabeth A, Alisha Reay, Jon Leven, and Jim M. Allen.

Trails of Evidence: How Forensic Science Works. Chantilly, VA:
Teaching Company, 2012.

Type of source?
News article?
Scholarly journal
article? Book?
Website? Other?

What does the source offer

your project? Background?
Statistics? Theory?
Argument?
Counterargument? Example?

Book

Statistics and Argument from

a similar viewpoint

Article

Theory

Book

Statistics

DVD

Background and Statistics

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Part 2: Exploratory Draft

In this project I hope to explore the effects of our emerging technological society on
memory, particularly in the development of handwriting skills in children. The data proves that
there is a distinct relation between handwriting and memory. I have witnessed, however, a
cultural shift towards digital means of learning, I hypothesize that the beneficial effects of
handwriting are lost in children today. This is important to me because, as a student, I am trying
to find the most effective ways to remember subject material, and I have found that when I hand
write notes they are noticeably more memorable. This is also important in our court system, as
eyewitness testimonies are still considered by judges to be the most reliable sources of proof.
However, there have been several studies that have shown how unreliable eyewitness testimonies
really are. False convictions have come from false identification and facial recognition. I will
examine these statistics to find the relationship between these false convictions and the shift from
a handwriting society.
This research will be relevant to educators and parents who want to provide the best
means of learning to children, as well as student like me who are always trying to find the most
effective strategies for learning. Not all may benefit, however, and even those who read the
research still may find it hard or even impossible to counter the cultural shift. There are many
benefits to using technology, and they may outweigh the effects it has on memory. When it
comes to the court system, there is no way to predict who will become a witness of a crime, and
whether or not their memory has suffered from the cultural shift. As a result, a solution that many
others are calling for is a reliance solely (or at least much more heavily) on hard evidence rather
than testimony or facial recognition.
Basic Structure:
1. Memory and handwriting
a. compare cursive to print writing
b. examine statistics on childrens handwriting over the past 40 years
c. show statistics of schools which have moved to all digital learning
2. Psychology behind it
a. show direct effects of handwriting on the brain
3. Judicial systems
a. examine false conviction and identification data over the past 40 years
I have found sources that show the connection between memory and handwriting, but I am still looking
for statistics of false convictions. It may prove difficult to pinpoint false eyewitness testimonies, as these
vary on a case to case basis and there are many other factors to a court conviction.