Forensic Psychology For Dummies (32 page)

‘Retrieving’ the memory:
After committing the information to memory, you then need to ‘retrieve’ that information. The process of retrieval is vulnerable because your memories can be distorted, as delving into your memory isn’t simply like playing a record. Remembering is an active process of generating a report of the bits of information that are stored. There may even be some assistance from general experience and logic of what is possible. ‘I usually have eggs for breakfast so I suppose I did three days ago. There are no eggs left so I guess I ate them all then.’

Remembering anything that you experienced more than a few moments ago means
reconstructing
past events (something I talk about more fully in the later section ‘Filling in the gaps: Errors in memory’). Reconstructing draws upon various strategies based on your knowledge and assumptions of what happens where and when (your preconceptions, in other words). The more the event follows your day-to-day expectations, the more you’re reconstructing what you
think
happened rather than any direct memory of what really
did
happen. The result is that you may inadvertently alter the facts and leave some out (forget them).

Decaying over time

Psychologists studying memory found that memories of a past event become rapidly worse and less detailed over time. This
decay over time
starts soon after the event and then the loss of memory levels off. In general the longer the delay between an event and your attempt to remember it, the less complete and accurate your account is going to be. For example, this decay can easily apply to a witness taking part in a police line-up or viewing a set of identification photographs.

The decay isn’t the same for everything though. I can still remember I was doing the washing up listening to the radio when I heard of John Lennon’s death. (It wasn’t the unusualness of my doing the washing up, but being at Liverpool University when The Beatles were in their prime meant they were part of my formative years.) However, I can’t remember if it was my turn to do the washing up last Wednesday or not. Regular actions and events don’t stick out in the same way as special or unusual ones.

Your memory doesn’t normally improve over time and most of your forgetting takes place close in time to the event. Within a few days most of the forgetting that’s going to take place has already happened. This forgetting occurs even when you’re at some pains to ‘store’ the memory by rehearsing it. Also, as you get older, retrieving information from memory becomes slower, without doubt. However, what you forget, and what you have difficulty remembering does depend on the many aspects I mention throughout this chapter.

Filling in the gaps: Errors in memory

You deal with the incremental loss of memory for events over time by
reconstructing
what happened. The processes of reconstructing those memories that do not stand out for the sorts of special emotional or distinct qualities I mention earlier can include:

Connections you’re holding between places and events.

Your experiences of patterns typical of various sorts of activities.

What you know about people and activities.

Memories are open to distortion from existing preconceptions, and from information discovered and events occurring after the experiences being remembered. Typically, these distortions aren’t deliberate or conscious: you genuinely believe that what you’re remembering is what occurred.

Post-event information can affect a witness’s memory and even cause the person to include non-existent details into a previously acquired memory.

One unexpected consequence of these distortions is that a witness’s report in a criminal case can get more complete and less ambiguous each time the witness repeats what happens. So the account being heard in court appears to be more accurate, perhaps many months after the initial somewhat confused report given to the police. This process of
filling in
can be an efficient way of remembering, but can also be unreliable. The witness may be distorting or reconstructing the memory to fit information that becomes available after the event, such as who’s suspected of the crime. The witness may be doing so for the best of intentions, conscientiously constructing parts of an unclear memory to make it seem more plausible.

Attempts to ‘remember better’ (such as using context re-instatement, which I describe in the earlier section ‘Recalling past events’) don’t necessarily lead to an increase in accuracy. The person is likely to remember far more, but there can still be plenty of errors in what is remembered. The witness may still be drawing unconsciously on assumptions of what’s likely to have happened and filling in with spurious details.

The need for a witness to make their recollection consistent, probable and harmonious can cause them to fill in the gaps (incorrectly) and repress information that blurs the issue or creates conflicts.