Recent experiments have implied that emotional arousal causes a narrowing of attention and, therefore, impoverished memory encoding. In contrast, other studies have found that emotional arousal enhances memory for all aspects of an event. We report two experiments investigating whether these differing results are due to the different retention intervals employed in past studies or to their different categorization schemes for the to-be-remembered material. Our results indicate a small role for retention interval in moderating emotion's effects on memory. However, emotion had markedly different impacts on different types of material: Emotion improved memory for gist and basic-level visual information and for plot-irrelevant details associated, both temporally and spatially, with the event's center. In contrast, emotion undermined memory for details not associated with the event's center. The mechanisms for emotion's effects are discussed.The emotional events in one's life tend to be remembered with great clarity and detail (e.g., Bohannon, 1988; Brown & Kulik, 1977;Pillemer, 1984;Reisberg, Heuer, McLean, & O'Shaughnessy, 1988;Rubin & Kozin, 1984;White, 1989). But how accurate are these memories? There are a number of cases in which conspicuous errors have been documented in the recall of emotional events, despite the great vividness and high confidence attached to these memories (Christianson, 1989; Linton, 1975, pp. 386-387; McCloskey, Wible, & Cohen, 1988;Neisser, 1982;Neisser & Harsch, 1990;Wagenaar & Groeneweg, 1990). Apparently, neither emotionality nor vividness provides any guarantee of memory accuracy.In fact, there is reason to believe that emotional events may be remembered less completely than neutral events.According to the Easterbrook hypothesis, physiological arousal leads to a "narrowing" of attention-that is, a reduction in the range of cues to which an organism is sensitive (e.g., Bruner, Matter, & Papanek, 1955;Easterbrook, 1959;Eysenck, 1982;Mandler, 1975). Since arousal generally accompanies emotion, emotion should also lead to this narrowing of attention. This should in tum lead to impoverished memories, since the "center" of the event might be well remembered, but little else will be. If, therefore, many details are subsequently recalled, these are likely to be after-the-fact reconstructions and, thus, open to error. A number of studies have examined these claims, but with conflicting results. Much of the research has examined memory for specific details about emotional events (color of clothing, details of background, etc.). It is This research was supported by funds from the Pew Charitable Trust and from Reed College. We thank Ben Harper for his help in completing Experiment I, and Audrey Wessler for her help in completing Experiment 2. Requests for reprints should be sent to the third author at Psychology Department, Reed College, Portland OR 97202 (e-mail: reisberg@reed.edu).presumably just these details that might be excluded by the hypothesized narrowing of attention. These specific ...
This Article attempts to reframe a burgeoning scholarly debate about the appropriateness of neighborhood self-governance as both a means to local crime control and a normatively worthy end in itself. On one side of the existing debate stands an emerging and influential group of "new discretion" scholars, who defend the delegation of discretion to police officers attempting to enforce social norms that are often ambiguous. These scholars argue that the support and involvement of so-called "communities" in such law enforcement efforts can be an adequate substitute for traditional judicial scrutiny of police discretion, particularly the prohibition against vague criminal laws. On the other side of the debate are traditional civil libertarians who view norm-based policing and the theories of selfgovernance underlying it as thinly disguised forms of majoritarianism. This Article has two primary goals. One goal is to use the author's experience as a community-based prosecutor to critique the new discretion scholars' reliance upon malleable notions of community to determine the legality of police programs. The second goal is to develop a more meaningful distinction among new policing efforts. Specifically, this Article advocates a distinction between civil and criminal initiatives. This approach would retain the existing prohibition against vague criminal laws. However, it would permit cities to implement strategies requiring police discretion, as long as those strategies avoid traditional criminal investigation, prosecution, and punishment. Such an approach would force cities either to adopt nontraditional responses to public safety problems or to be scrutinized under the traditional rules governing criminal law and procedure. 1. See WESLEY G. SKOGAN & SUSAN M. HARTNETT, COMMUNITY POLICING, CHICAGO STYLE at vi (1997) ("The concept [of community policing] is so popular with the public and city councils that scarcely a chief wants his department to be known for failing to climb on this bandwagon."); Tracey L. Meares, A Colloquium on Community Policing: Praying for Community Policing, 90 CAL. L. REV. 1593 (2002) (noting that the term community policing "has become ubiquitous among lawenforcement practitioners and scholars" and collecting sources that use the term). 2. See infra Part .B-C for a discussion of the role of police discretion in the new policing models and a summary of the new discretion scholarship defending that discretion.
The questions whether and when federal prosecutors may ethically contact parties who have retained attorneys about the subject of the representation recently have been the focus of considerable controversy. In this note, Alafair S.R. Burke traces the history of attempts by the Department of Justice toformulate a uniform rule governing such direct communications and analyzes the regulations the Department finalized in August 1994. Ms. Burke argues that federal government attorneys should be subject to a single national standard rather than numerous state no-contact rules, and that certain limited exceptions to the rule are justified in the criminal context. She contends, however, that the new regulations are overbroad because they go beyond the legitimate needs of law enforcement by allowing most direct contacts prior to an arrest. She offers an alternative approach that would create narrow exceptions to the no-contact rule based on the special needs offederal prosecutors. Finally, Ms. Burke argues that prosecutors who violate the rule should be disciplined by state bars but that, contrary to the Second Circuit's holding in United States v. Hammad, courts need not suppress evidence gathered in violation of the rule. 1. For a review of the history and purpose of the no-contact rule, see Roger C. Cramton & Lisa K.
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