![]() ![]() Numerous studies have shown that police, judges, jurors and others involved in the legal system have a number of naïve beliefs about memories, ones that contradict scientific research (e.g., Benton, Ross, Bradshaw, Thomas, & Bradshaw, 2006 Magnussen, Melinder, Raja, & Stridbeck, 2010 Rubin & Bernstein, 2007). As well, questions arise as to how well people involved in forensic settings understand how memory works. That is, when memory researchers serve as memory experts in the courtroom, new translational questions emerge about the nature of memory particularly as it pertains to memory accuracy for traumatic events. This view of memory has emerged over the past few decades of intense scientific research about memory processes, much of which was inspired by memory researchers interacting with the judicial system. Although the source or origin of these memory illusions might differ, because their memorial consequences are essentially the same, we will use the term false memory to refer to both types of memory illusion. Such illusions can emerge spontaneously in an individual, being created endogenously, or can arise due to the suggestion of another person, being created exogenously. Memory illusions can be as simple as misremembering whether one saw a Stop sign or a Yield sign at an intersection to misremembering entire experiences such as being lost in a shopping mall as a child or even being abducted by a UFO. This fallibility of memory includes not only the omission of details from the original experience, but extends to errors of commission including the creation of memory illusions. Because the contents of our memories for experiences involve the active manipulation (during encoding), integration with pre-existing information (during consolidation), and reconstruction (during retrieval) of that information, memory is, by definition, fallible at best and unreliable at worst. Moreover, what gets remembered is reconstructed from the remnants of what was originally stored that is, what we remember is constructed from whatever remains in memory following any forgetting or interference from new experiences that may have occurred across the interval between storing and retrieving a particular experience. Specifically, what gets retold about an experience depends on whom one is talking to and what the purpose is of remembering that particular event (e.g., telling a friend, relaying an experience to a therapist, telling the police about an event). What gets retrieved later from that memory is determined by that same multitude of factors that contributed to encoding as well as what drives the recollection of the event. ![]() This information is subsequently integrated ( consolidated) with other information that has already been stored in a person's long-term, autobiographical memory. Rather, what gets encoded into memory is determined by what a person attends to, what they already have stored in memory, their expectations, needs and emotional state. This is because memory does not provide a veridical representation of events as experienced. When memory serves as evidence, as it does in many civil and criminal legal proceedings, there are a number of important limitations to the veracity of that evidence. The science of memory is as central to the law as biology is to medicine. Finally, we consider the way in which the research on memory (true and false) has been successfully integrated into some courtroom procedures. We revisit some of the prominent trials of the 1980s and 1990s to not only consider the role false memories have played in judicial decisions, but also to see how this has helped us understand memory today. We present a brief historical overview of false memories that focuses on three critical forensic areas that changed memory research: children as eyewitnesses, historic sexual abuse and eyewitness (mis)identification. But what lessons have we learned, some 35 years later, about the role of memory in the judicial system? In this review, we focus on what we now know about the consequences of the fallibility of memory for legal proceedings. Prominent legal cases of the 1980s and 1990s sparked lengthy debates and important research questions surrounding the fallibility and general reliability of memory. ![]() The capability of adult and child witnesses to accurately recollect events from the past and provide reliable testimony has been hotly debated for more than 100 years. ![]()
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