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Erasmus University Rotterdam Psychology Elective Legal Psychology Summary
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Legal psychology elective summary. All literatures, lecturer notes and lectures are included.
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Legal Psychology Literature SummaryEyewitness Memory – Topic 1
True and false memories in forensic contexts (1)
Blandon-Gitlin, Fenn, Paquette
- Memory can be corrupted during the fact-finding process.
Witness memory
- Memory does not work like a recording device.
- Memory is a constructive and reconstructive process.
- When a person witnesses an event such as a crime, they will typically only acquire pieces of the
information from the environment. These pieces become a building material for that memory.
However, these pieces of information are not enough to form a fully complete representation, so
information from other sources is used to form the memory.
Other sources can be information stored in memory (i.e., schemas), information from
external sources (i.e., other witnesses, interview questions), and information generated
from thinking about the event afterward (i.e., making interferences from details
encountered).
- The result of this is a memory constructed of combined fragments, some experienced, some
assumed, and some acquired afterwards.
- Memories are not set in concrete; they are fluid and can change over time.
- At the time of the retrieval, the memory is reconstructed.
- Events are not simply replayed in the mind as they originally occurred. The reconstruction
process can take many forms, including witnesses trying to fit old or new information into a
coherent story.
- The degree of reliability of that memory will depend on factors that operate at the time of the
event and those operating afterward.
Memory for traumatic events
- Traumatic memories will be most likely recalled, and that, depending on multiple factors, the
accuracy of details (especially gist and central details) can be more reliable than memories for
everyday events.
- Special event memories are also malleable, prone to distortion, and affected by the processes of
forgetting.
Misinformation effects and false memories
- Witnesses can be misled by suggestive forces (e.g., misleading questions, inviting speculation,
and imagination) to report false details of experienced events.
- People will claim to remember non-existent films of highly publicized events (i.e., after the El Al
1862 disaster, people remembered seeing a film about the crash and the fire followed right after.
The film did not exist, but the participants’ memories were schema-congruent).
- Adults can develop entire false autobiographical memories of events.
- Entire false memories about perpetrating a crime can be developed as well.
, - Rich false memories: under strong suggestive condition, relevant to forensic context, people can
develop false memories of events in which they now believe they are victims and perpetrators.
- Distorting a memory is relatively easier than planting a new memory or erasing a memory.
- This research has shown that discriminating between true and false accounts is a difficult task.
Post-event information
- External information can easily integrate into a witness’s memory, especially if the event was
poorly encoded or the memory representation is from a distant event where time and forgetting
have degraded the original memory.
- This process can be explicit (i.e., the witness knows it is happening), but it is often unconscious.
That is, the witness might find himself or herself thinking about the event differently without
awareness.
- Co-witness influence: Witnesses hearing each other’s testimony, or discussing their memories
with each other, sometimes results in a positive effect on memory by strengthening the memory
trace for the experienced event. However, these same activities can introduce information that
contaminates witnesses’ memories.
People who know each other (e.g., friends, romantic partners) are more likely to report
information obtained from their co-witnesses as if it were from their own memory than
witnesses not previously acquainted.
- In real-world situations, the difference between acquaintances’ and strangers’ influence on co-
witnesses is likely to be even larger because acquaintances are more likely to be in close
communication in the days after experiencing a crime.
- Questioning witnesses (schema consistent event): The method of questioning a witness (including
question type) affects the accuracy and completeness of reports and subsequent memory for the
events. Subtle changes in one word in the question can have a tremendous influence on the
witness’s reports (i.e., smashed and bumped car example)
- Repeatedly asking witnesses the same question despite having received an answer suggests to the
witness that the answer already given is not what the interviewer is looking for or that the witness
is wrong. The repetition can cause the witness to keep trying to remember until they produce the
“correct memory.”
- Forced confabulation effect: people can develop subsequent false memories of such explicitly
fabricated details in response to “unanswerable” repeated questions and are likely to later report
those details as if they were true.
- Visuals: Visuals such as photographs and videos can easily trigger memories for past events that
have been forgotten or are otherwise unavailable via conscious recollection.
Research shows that photographs combined with other suggestive techniques can
contribute to the creation of false memories of entire events.
Retention Interval
- The longer the interval between an event and the time witnesses have to provide an account the
more likely the account will have significant distortions, especially when various additional
memory factors operate.
- Recollection context is important: such as whether the event was experienced one time or
repeatedly, whether the event was recalled a single time or repeatedly, and whether the event was
experienced in childhood or adulthood.
,Imagination & visualization
- When people imagine non-experienced events or scenarios either by themselves or in the context
of conversations with others, it is possible that a process of “imagination inflation” will result and
lead to false memories.
A person’s confidence that the imagined event occurred will be amplified by simply
imagining the event itself, and this can lead to false beliefs.
Event plausibility
- This construct relates to the type of prior knowledge the witness has about suggested events.
- Having general knowledge about how an event occurs, and possessing schema-relevant
information in memory, makes it more plausible to implant information about the occurrence of
such an event.
Have you seen a gun in the robbery? Since seeing a gun in a robbery is schema-
congruent, eyewitnesses will be more likely to remember seeing a gun at the crime scene.
- What is plausible for a participant depends on their knowledge on a subject.
Inconsistency within and across interviews
- Psychological research has shown that the accuracy or reliability of a detail depends on (a) the
nature of the inconsistency (contradiction, addition, or deletion), (b) the type of detail (core
versus peripheral), and (c) how the detail was elicited (same versus different interview or
question type).
- Psychologists categorize inconsistencies as direct contradictions (conflicting responses; i.e.,
different details reported at Time 1 versus Time 2), reminisce (more recall; i.e., new detail
reported at Time 2 but not reported at Time 1), and omissions (forgetting; i.e., detail reported at
Time 1 but not reported at Time 2).
Direct contradictions are the least reliable and accurate.
Cognitive processes in memory errors and false memories / Source memory errors
- Source memory judgement: How people decide whether a memory representation is of an
experienced event or the product of thinking or from hearing someone else tell us.
- Errors in this type of judgment occur when people become confused about the source of the
information. Confusion is more likely to occur when the memory representation of a
false/imagined event has the characteristics of true memories (e.g., vivid, detailed, contextually
embedded).
Gist and verbatim memory traces
- The verbatim (detailed actual) memory of seeing the person yell, and the gist (general
interpretation) memory of what happened, will both be created after an event.
- Gist memory contains much less detail than the verbatim experience of the event. These verbatim
memory traces fade much more quickly than gist memory traces.
- If a gist memory involved the notion that “He hates me” and that is what is left because the
verbatim traces of the actual episode have faded, the likelihood of developing false memories that
are specifically tied to the “He hates me” gist is greater.
Individual differences
- People with relatively low intelligence and poor perceptual abilities are likely to be highly
susceptible to misinformation.
, - People who recovered a trauma memory (of unknown validity) through suggestive techniques
(e.g., guided imagery exercises) are more prone to develop false memories than those who report
spontaneously recovering memories.
- Dissociative identity disorder patients are more susceptible to suggestion and false memories.
Protocols to promote quality memory reports
- These protocols are particularly suited to reduce the likelihood of misinformation effects and
false memories because they are both information-gathering protocols, where witnesses’ memory
abilities and limitations, their thoughts and emotions, are taken into account.
1. Cognitive Interview (CI) and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
protocol (NICHD)
- Both put a strong emphasis on developing rapport and taking a witness-centered approach; both
focus on the importance of question types that promote accuracy and increase the amount of
details, and both allow for flexibility in the use of memory retrieval techniques.
- CI is for interviewing all witness groups and NICHD is for interviewing children.
Rapport and transfer of control
- In many instances, witnesses, and especially victims, must provide detailed accounts of intimate,
personal, and often times traumatic experiences to investigators and legal professionals who are
complete strangers.
- Rapport-building can start by simply letting the witness know that the investigator or legal
professional wants to know them better, that they should talk about their day, work, or family.
- Rapport should involve an interest in the person, active listening, respect, and empathy.
- The witness may think that his or her role is to simply answer questions posed. This could have a
detrimental effect on the quantity of information in the witness’s reports, because the witness may
be less likely to elaborate on events or report details that he or she think are unimportant. To
transfer control, the professional should suggest to the witness that he or she will be relying on
the witness to play an active role in reporting because he or she is the one with firsthand
knowledge of the event. Also give control to the witness so that they can feel in charge again after
the traumatic event that happened to them.
Question types and memory retrieval techniques
- Once rapport has been accomplished and the rules of the interview have been established, both
the CI and NICHD protocols emphasize having the witness place himself or herself in the time
frame of the target event or mentally recreate the context in which the event took place.
- More specific questions may be asked to clarify information the witness mentions. Forced-choice,
leading, and suggestive questions that introduce information (which can be misinformation) or
suggest a response are avoided as much as possible.
- Strategies such as generating self-relevant cues, drawing, and providing the event in reverse
chronological order, thinking about the event from another’s perspective are part of CI protocol.
- By mentally traveling to the original time and place where the event occurred, the witness is less
likely to access post-event information from multiple prior interviews or from discussing,
imagining, and thinking about the event.
- CI instructions did not induce false beliefs and importantly that they may have protecting effects.
Protocols to discriminate between true and false memories
- Tests assess whether each criterion (e.g., CBCA (criteria-based content analysis): quantity of
details, contextual embedding; RM (reality monitoring): vividness, sensory details) is present in
the accounts; a score is then assigned to the accounts based on the number of criteria found.
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