Questions:
Why isn?t the great bulk of the witnesses saying the limousine stopped or almost stopped a major problem for the notion that we can rely on the witnesses if bulk of the witnesses support a certain observation?
Time perception changes during trauma. The witnesses looking at the limousine would have had a faulty perception of its movement speed during trauma. Attention is also crucial here, as only that to which attention is fixed is properly consolidated in memory.
Time perception on this scale (to horribly oversimplify) is controlled primarily by the flow of an excitatory monoamine neurotransmitter called dopamine, which is also involved in motivation, pleasure, reward, the felling of being correct, etc. This flow starts at the substantia nigra (involved in reward and movement), travels through other basal ganglia and into the anterior prefrontal cortex (involved in a variety of complex cognitive abilities, personality, planning, decision making, etc).
The faster these clock neurons (those dopaminergic cells invloved) fire, the more events we register. This is the brain splitting time up into packets of stimuli or events. If this circuit oscillates once every 1/10 of a second, then we encode one event every 1/10 of a second; which will form our conscious perception of time. If this speeds up, then we encode more data. We encode one event per oscillation.
This can be understood with some pathological examples. Schizophrenia results when there is too much dopamine in the brain, and schizophrenics tend to suffer from something called catatonia?the perception of time moving incredibly slow or even stopping entirely. This is because the circuit is firing at some speeds that it?s encoding every minute detail and forining it into one long conscious experience. Parkinson?s diseas occurs when there is too little dopamine, and is sometimes accompanied by the perception that everything is moving too fast?dopamine is tiring so slow that several clusters of events are encoded as one perception, therefore making time seem like it?s sped up.
(Carter, 2014,
The Brain Book, p. 190)
During traumatic events, dopamine is not flowing so well; which means time feels to be slowing down and more details can be detected but these combine to form a slower conscious perception of what?s being observed. But attention to stimuli is still a crucial element here.
Moreover, as the neuroscientist David Eagleman discovered, people judge the duration of stressful events to be longer after some time has passed.
If the great bulk of the witnesses are wrong about the speed of the limousine, why couldn?t they be wrong about the spacing of the shots? [/b]
As discussed above, this faulty perception is justified with the fact we know the limo slowed down and that their perception of time was slower due to a halt in dopamine during high stress and trauma. However keep in mind that witnesses probably weren?t interested in counting the number and spacing of gunshots, so they may still be wrong.
And I question that notion that ?Psychologists have long noted that our sense of time slows as a traumatic event unfolds?. Playing NFL football is pretty stressful. Rookies commonly find the game too fast for them. If they can stay in the league for a while, they may be able to calm down and find that the game is no longer too fast for them.
That?s stress, not trauma. Being in a crowd with loud gunshots echoing and being a rookie footballer and not even slightly comparable.
