Forensic Psychology For Dummies (31 page)
Read Forensic Psychology For Dummies Online
Authors: David Canter
Requiring a photographic memory!
Courts of law are good at assuming that all witnesses and defendants have a good memory of what happened. Here’s one example. I was giving evidence in a trial in which a report I’d written 20 years earlier was drawn on, but I hadn’t been given advance notice of this fact. I was expected to remember the details of the report without being allowed to look over the document itself. Also, in the same trial, something I said in the morning was raised with me in the afternoon, as if I had total recall of everything I was saying and the exact words I was using.
The earliest studies of memory show how quickly ordinary memories decay and fade away, but the attorneys questioning me were keen to act as if no such memory decay exists. As a witness I was expected to remember everything without having any prompting. Of course not all courts work exactly like this, but any admission of a lack of clarity of memory can be used to challenge the veracity of what the witness is saying. (Skip to Chapter 12 if you want to see how this works in court proceedings.)
Recalling past events
Research shows that memory isn’t like taking an old photograph out of a box, which may have just faded a bit with age.
You have two types of memory working very differently from each other:
Long-term memory:
You’re drawing on your long-term memory when remembering a past event such as a crime.
Your short-term memory is your immediate memory – your working memory – like a scratch pad where you make a note or jot down a phone number before throwing it away.
The effectiveness of your long-term memory for an event or experience depends on:
You can help a witness or victim remember the event by offering useful cues such as taking them back to the context of the event (called
context re- instatement
). For example, if you’re being asked to recall what you ate in a particular restaurant, it’s much easier to remember if you go back to the restaurant, rather than trying to remember from a distance. Going back to where you were at the time of the crime is useful for jogging your memory of the event. The process can add detail and clarity rather than changing the fundamental aspects of the memory itself.
Sometimes a significant event has an overwhelming and emotional impact on you, called a
flashbulb memory
. Like, where you were and how you heard about the 9/11 Twin Towers attacks or, if you’re my age, where you were and how you heard of the death of John F. Kennedy or John Lennon.
A difference exists between identification testimony and other forms of testimony. When you’re asked to select (say, from a police line-up or a set of photographs) a person who you saw and who’s associated with a crime, it’s usually referred to as
eyewitness testimony
(see the later section ‘Looking into Eyewitness Testimony’). Choosing from a presented selection in this way is very different from generating your own account of what happened in a police interview.
Forgetting: Why do people fail to remember?
Forgetting the details of an event involves two processes:
If you didn’t notice or pay much attention to the initial information, you tend not to ‘store’ the information effectively. The more unusual, memorable or emotionally significant the event, the more it attracts your attention, and so you’re more likely to remember the details.