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THE ROLE OF MEMORY PROCESSES IN SHAPING EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS
DURING POLICE INTERROGATIONS
Introduction
Memory's crucial role in criminal justice system reliability
Memory is a volatile yet potent component in the criminal justice system; it significantly
determines the credibility of the evidence from testimonies that are the foundation of any
prosecution and conviction processes. Source remembering and recall can be easily distorted and
therefore bring issue with trust in identification from eyewitnesses or victims. Further, false
memories can be reconstructed or created consciously or subconsciously and this has been
known to lead to severe miscarriages of justice as a result of inaccurate recalls by the witnesses,
the victims or even the defendants. If combining imperfect memory recall with police
interrogations that use trick questions or bias, there is a possibility of having fabricated
information, accidental misdirection from witness or defendants, or forcing coerced confessions
which incarcerate numerous innocent individuals. Furthermore, traumatic memories result in
poor recall by victims or eyewitnesses that results in crucial missing links in testimonies or even
conflicting statements that lead to stereotyped perception of credibility of a witness or an accuse
in the court of law. Stressful occurrences can also produce intrusive images that are subjectively
both realistic and emotionally charged, even though they pertain to objective details in the
individual‟s life. Thus it is not only reliability issues of trauma that are problematic in relation to
witness memory and the credibility of witness testimony but also the processes that underpin
memory. In addition, cross-racial identifications focus on recalling features of faces that are
encoded through less accurate and less detailed encoding and retrieval processes, so erroneous or
overconfident identifications of suspects belonging to different races increase convictions for
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minorities. Due to the fact that memory is an essential yet very fragile component in the entire
legal process, most of the reform measures aim at enhancing the manner in which eyewitness
identification is conducted, ensuring that all interrogations are videotaped, applying cognitive
interview approaches, and informing jurors about the weaknesses of memory in order to reduce
the rate of wrongful prosecutions or convictions. Hearings need to be supported by other more
reliable objective evidence, to supplement memory fallibility that is part of human nature. Thus,
while seeking justice for the victims, accused, and communities that the justice system serves, its
moral compass to determine the truth and provide fairness therefore depends on acknowledging
memory‟s unreliability and searching for others procedural measures and standards that do not
exploit memory‟s flaws. Despite the best efforts of reformist jurists, scholars, and legal
reformers, guaranteeing due-process and just convictions remains elusive unless society starts to
take memory and its fallibilities, as something that truly defines and shapes our criminal justice
systems.
Complexity of memory processes during eyewitness recall
Eyewitness and recall is an intricate psychological approach influenced by numerous
factors that determine the extent to which event memories are accurate or complete in the short
term or over the long term, when in the course of narrating the event. In the case of an event, all
that is paid attention to, how it is perceived, and encoded into the short-term memory and then
transferred into the long-term memory determines which and what aspect of the scenario is
retained and how accurate the information is. Concerning the degree of central vs peripheral
information processing, with the focus on the central aspects as opposed to peripheral ones, as
well as with regard to the focus on the events that are beyond expectations versus those that are
expected, and the focus on the conspicuous vs inconspicuous objects and behaviors, it is
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important to accept that these aspects determine what information is even encoded at all.
Lighting, distance, angles, and other such factors also play a part in shaping perception as these
factors determine what actually gets in front of the sensory receptors and get relayed to the brain
for processing. However, there are some factors which influence the process of encoding, such as
the availability of neurotransmitters and connections within the brain to store the encoded
information, and the lack of distractions in terms of stress response or any other cognitive task
that may hinder the complete process of encoding. Memory trace can be susceptible to forgetting
or even metamorphosis within hours, days, months, or years since the time of occurrence of an
event to the time of retrieval of that memory. Recollections do not remain clean and pristine over
the years - they can erode, assimilate with other memories in distorting manner, or if
misinformation is fed to witnesses they change. Last but not the least, even the retrieval process
poses certain challenges like context, way of framing questions, social pressure, anxiety level,
reconstructive restatement in terms of translation of memories into statements, etc., that also
affect the details that are finally retrieved from the eyewitness. Impression formation, selective
attention, encoding, storage, consolidation, and retrieval of information regarding an event
influence eyewitness memory limits and extent in numerous yet unknown ways. There are
techniques like cognitive interviews which were developed in order to address some of these
problems, yet human memory is still a constructive one that can be filled with biases at every
stage starting with perception and ending with recall.
Impact of interrogation techniques on memory accuracy
Practices of interrogation could in fact influence the memory and the quality of the
testimony given to a great extent. Coercive or leading questioning is a practice that directs the
line of questioning toward the desired answer by forcing the witness or suspect to recall past
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incidences even if they are hazy on details. This pressure can lead a person to speculate over
information which he or she cannot remember, or even put in false information in the process of
an otherwise helpful or interminable interrogation. For example, leading questions which assume
some details of an event or suggest certain particulars (“You saw the suspect holding a knife, did
you?”) Such questions will make the witness say yes or no even though their memory at the time
of trial was hazy. It interferes and alters the actual memory that was initially made by the brain.
Constant questioning also makes a witness re-act events over and over again from the angle that
the interrogators have put into consideration rather than recalling an incident as a witness. The
issues are framed and reconciled over multiple interviews taking a form which is directed in the
way indicated by the interrogators rather than the events witnessed. It only emphasizes the fact
that even non-aggressive interview can accidentally lead to implantation of false memories if
there are inaccuracies within the questioning. Other features of the examination also lead the
answer to shift from one direction to another, for example tones used by the interrogators.
Specifically, children and adolescents have their memories vulnerable to such changes and
influence from continuous and probing questioning by authoritative individuals. Measures taken
during interviews with witnesses that lower condition that causes stress, leading questions,
redundancy, and other factors that negatively influence the exactness enhances the command of
the witness Whereas stances taken by the investigative team, which is intended to elicit as much
information as possible are damaging to accuracy regardless to whether or not this is intentional
on the part of the investigator. The assessment of the techniques, the minimization of leading
questions, the reconsidering of assumptions that have been made, as well as the separation of
witness interviews during the first steps of investigation lowers the danger of memory distortion.
Interrogation technique blame minimizes the influence of witness accounts on court outcomes
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and helps courts and investigators compare the certainty and accuracy of eyewitnesses‟ accounts
instead of focusing on the quantity of witness statements while controlling for memory distortion
due to prior methods of interrogation.
Encoding: Initial Formation of Eyewitness Memories
Attentional focus influences details stored in memory
Attention focus influences details stored in memory which is means that the details which
get stored in the memory can be colored by the attention that a person pays to an event at the
time when the event happens. In the given case, when an individual is able to observe an intricate
event or situation then it is simply impossible for the person to focus on every single aspect all at
once. Attention is like a lens through which information is passed – some parts of information
are made bright and others are left in the shade. As we have seen, it is only the aspects that
attention gets focused on that have a greater chance of being transferred from sensory memories
to other forms of memory and storage. For instance, let‟s assume that a person observes an
automobile accident but their attention is immediately directed and mostly concentrated on one
of the automobiles later on; it means that he or she is going to recall more specific and clear
information about the condition of the car afterward. However, for other aspects of the peripheral
context such as the weather condition or presence of other people, they may only recall
fragmented and rather empty information. Other attention instigators include accidental
occurrences such as an accident or a crime that automatically attract attention through emotion –
There will be a clear recall of the central and more emotional aspects such as injury or threat and
poor recall of the periphery and its context in a traumatic event. This is because memory has a
unique gateway that works like a funnel, through which only a limited amount of information
gets through to storage. Post event list also points that manipulations of attention also play a
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crucial role in determining what details are retained in the memory. Questioning that may remind
the user of aspects which were not initially noticed or considered can complement the lack of
information in the original memory.
Cues for elaboration and follow-up questions do not just influence the recall, but can also
influence details which get consolidated again in the memory storage through memory
suggestibility. It is important to grasp the interaction that exists between attention and encoding
because the information gathered influences eyewitness accounts and can lead to contamination
of memory by improper interviewing practices and expectation biases. To sum up, focusing on
something means shaping it, and this is entirely applicable to memory, though the saying goes,
„Where our attention goes, our consciousness follows.‟ The attention spotlight essentially
brightens up for encoding; it not only brings into focus these important features, but at the same
time casts everything else into relative obscurity – and it is these highlighted attended details that
go into the construction of eyewitness memory storage and subsequent retrieval.
Emotional arousal affects strength of memory traces
Stress and affective responses to an event may therefore influence memory encoding and
later recall of the event or any related information, especially in eyewitness testimony. That is
why in a situation with a crime or a tragic event, the eyewitness experiences an emotional
reaction such as fear, anger, or shock. This arousal leads to the region of the amygdala to become
active together with other regions such as the hippocampus which in charge of memory storage.
The amygdala informs the CA that the current event is highly relevant and must be labeled with
a high level of importance as it leads to the strengthening of memory for face and specific vision,
which clearly become distinct in the appearance of people and specific scenes of the event.
However, very high degree of activation can negatively affect the functioning of the
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hippocampus and decrease peripheral non-emotional information encoding. Christianson and
Loftus in 1987, did this in their research whereby they showed participants either neutral or
traumatized emotional slide sequence. In the next week, the high emotion group had less
accurate memory of neutral slides given in middle but had enhanced memory of the negative
emotional slides. This demonstrates that arousal enhances the recollection of central emotionally-
relevant aspects of an event and not peripheral, non-emotional ones. A meta-analysis conducted
by Deffenbacher in 1994 established that high stress detracts accuracy of eyewitness memory on
peripheral aspects but enhances their vividness of memory on central aspects. There are
differences in reacting to arousal in individuals. According to McCloskey et al of 1998, the
witnesses who are high in stressful reactivity were more damaged in their memory regarding the
peripheral details of crime than low reactivity witnesses. The amygdala instructs the
hippocampus to increase consolidation of the emotionally central items into long-term memory
stores at the expense of reading less efficiently for the peripheral neutral items that may not be
attention capturing in the stimulating environment.
Perceptual biases shape interpretation of witnessed events
Biases influence the way we perceive and remember events that have been witnessed. In
the event occurrence, we do not record information and then broadcast it like a camcorder does.
However, the awareness of the input data arises through the actual working of the brain, which
chooses filters, interprets, and analyzes the data in relation to our expectations, motives, affective
states, and knowledge. This process called encoding defines the way in which we select some
information to be retained in memory and how this information is structured. For instance, if
your attitude towards people is that they are engaging in suspicious activity then if you encounter
a person acting in a peculiar manner, you will be already primed to view his intentions and
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movement in a negative light, thus giving you the tendency to pay more attention and remember
all the related information. While one person can be biased towards those details, another person
with no such prejudice can easily forget all the specific features of that scene and remember quite
differently. The same way attention influences encoding depending on what is deemed important
or deserves attention at any given time. Imagine two witnesses watch a fight – one tries to
determine the nature of the interaction between the individuals based on their body language and
facial expressions in order to better grasp the situation, the other closely observes movements, in
case somebody wants to bring up legal issues at a later stage. These two perceptual focuses
engender contrasting encoding processes and essentially imply that the witnesses retain disparate
information regarding similar occurrences. These prejudices can also influence interpretation and
memory in our own subconscious, thereby creating an even bigger problem by producing racist,
sexist, ageist, etc., recollections which people believe to be true when, in fact, they are not.
However, other types of biases, such as source-specific bias, which refers to biases based on the
person‟s area of specialization, may enhance rather than hinder the accuracy of eyewitnesses‟
details regarding the specialized area. An off-duty police officer could identify some elements of
crime with higher precision due to enhanced perceptual mechanisms resulting from training and
work experience. Of course, no one can have perfect memory to replicate what was learned
because of the constructive aspect of encoding. Nevertheless, by making people aware of the
distortions that come with perception and memory when it comes to reporting events that have
been witnessed when in search of justice, then the biases can be tested and controlled for so that
a more accurate representation of what was witnessed can be achieved.
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Consolidation: Stabilization of Eyewitness Memory Traces
Sleep's role in strengthening newly formed memories
Memory consolidation is one of the critical aspects of sleep, where newly-created
memories are stabilized and enhanced. It forms a basis for the encoding of new information and
an experience that happens during days; early memories are described as being weak and
susceptible to interference and forgetting if not consolidated over time. Consolidation
consolidates the neural trace representations of memories, enabling the copying of memory from
the temporary hippocampal storage into more permanent cortical networks for integration with
prior knowledge. It is during sleep and specifically during the stage referred to as REM sleep
with theta waves, that this active systems-level consolidation takes place across multiple areas of
the brain. Some of the researchers have looked at sleep in particular for its role of consolidation
in imprinting of eyewitness memory traces following exposure to staged crimes. In the case of
stimuli related to a theft, participants have better recall of the central details and peripheral
information if they are tested after a full night of sleep as compared to if they were tested after
waking up and general wakefulness in the day. The memory pattern remains different from that
of the control group, thus providing evidence of sleep consolidation. It also emerged that the
temporal distribution of sleep also plays a critical role, where memory consolidation seems to be
much more efficient when sleep occurs soon after encoding as compared to a later period. It
remains unknown exactly how sleep enhances these memories but is assumed to entail
reactivation of learning-associated firing patterns during the sleep for the purpose of stimulating
synapse consolidation. In conclusion one can recall that sleep after learning enables people to
recall the contents in detail and with lesser errors than when one stays awake after learning
enables the new memories to be more vulnerable and decayed as time goes on. Hence, the most
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effective consolidation and retentive memory of an eyewitness event, which could be a crime or
an accident, occurs when the eyewitness has a normal night‟s sleep after the event with minimal
intrusions or oblivion of the details Sleep is crucial for converting individual episodes from a
given day into stable long-term memories that retain the core and peripheral information.
Rehearsal and retelling impact memory consolidation process
Rehearsal and retelling specifically enhance the memory consolidation process. Memory
consolidation is the process whereby memories become less susceptible to interference and are
transformed from being of the short-term kind into the long-term type, which is a very complex
process that involves a number of changes that happen at the physical and chemical level within
the brain. If an event occurs, the sensory stimuli generate a fleeting event memory or an engram
encoded in the neuron networks throughout the brain. Through rehearsal and repeated recall,
over hours, days and years such memory traces remain the only form of memory that can be
consolidated for long-term stable storage. In particular, the verbal rehearsal of an eyewitness
event recedes the memory trace: the pattern of neuronal responses corresponding to that
experience. This reactivation communicates with genes that produce proteins to create firm links
between neurons which store that memory. Likewise, the process of verbally recounting the
events in the presence of an individual entails retrieval processes that reinstate the memory trace,
which in turn causes consolidation. Eyewitnessing the event also helps the storyteller make the
memory coherent and relate it to prior experience or knowledge since in order to tell the story, it
has to be constructed in a coherent and comprehensible manner. The same process of modifying
the memory during retrieval also strengthens the memory trace along the different neural circuits
involved, and thereby consolidates it for long term storage. Both mental and verbal post-event
review are useful to eyewitnesses and can help to strengthen memory for an event to ensure that
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the details can be recalled in the future even when there is a significant time gap between the
event and the recollection. It may be important to provide eyewitnesses with the possibilities of
„rehearsal and retelling‟ at a time that is as near as to the actual event to enhance the memory
consolidation processes and stabilize eyewitness memory traces over time. It can thus be
concluded that consolidation through post-event memory activation is another crucial factor in
eyewitness memory construction.
Stress hormones influence long-term memory storage mechanisms
Stress hormones affect memory storage processes through some cortical regions such as
the amygdala and hippocampus which have a significant role to play in consolidation of
memory. In the process of stress, which is a hormonal activation of the body, hormones like
cortisol and adrenaline stimulate the amygdala. After that the amygdaloidal complex sends a
message to the hippocampus to modify the events and prioritize them for storage in memory
because they are stimulating and potentially signal danger or reward. Indeed, stress hormones
enhance Long Term Potentiation in the hippocampus; this enhances the connection density
between neurons. This means that there is increased probability that the stress related
information is stored in the long-term declarative memory. An experiment conducted with the
participants was to give them stress hormones immediately after they had been shown
emotionally arousing pictures of various types; the findings realized that the participants were
able to recall the images better when tested several days later than when they were given placebo
or no treatment at all. Various research investigations have also revealed that people who
witnessed real offences actually have better and reliable recall of central details, and these
researchers believe is due to the fact that stress hormones are liberated during the commission of
the offence, which helps in improving memory fixations. Over activity of the stress system can
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be detrimental and have a negative effect on hippocampal activity and memory. During police
investigations, it is possible to ensure that there is the minimum further stress on the eyewitness
to elicit the required memories. Conducting a cognitive interview with open-ended questions can
help the eyewitness recall certain details without influencing his/her stress that may decrease the
recall. Concisely, stress hormones play an important role in how memories are stored and formed
in the long term through influence with the amygdale and the hippocampus. Whereas moderate
stress enhances consolidation, excessive stress can possibly interfere with the hippocampal
mechanisms that underlie accurate eyewitness memory. This means that when police or other
investigators are trying to elicit recall from an eyewitness they should try to do this in a way that
will not precipitate further stress reactions if they want to get the best out of the eyewitness.
Retrieval: Accessing Stored Memories During Interrogations
Contextual cues trigger recall of specific details
One gets to understand that contextual cues can be used to immediately bring into focus
even specific aspects that one did not know that they have in the store of their memories. This
information forms the content of memory and thus when one is in a similar context as the one in
which an encoding event was made, one is likely to retrieve components of the memory that
would have otherwise be out of reach. Recreating contextual factors from the scene of a crime or
an encoding event may make a subject remember things they do not wish to reveal intentionally.
Environmental variables such as smell, sound, light or time, place or people are likely to trigger
recall of specific sensory and perceptual details that otherwise suspects are not in a position to
voluntarily reconstruct when questioned in a police station or any other place that is dissimilar to
the circumstances under which the information was acquired. It is therefore our opinion that
interrogation techniques should further weigh the ethical question and the psychological effect of
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returning the suspect to the original scene of the crime or inundating them with potent reminders
of the context in which the crime occurred. It may be beneficial for honest suspects to refresh
their memory of some specific facts necessary for investigation development. Failure to
distinguish between imaginary reconstruction and actual episodic memory implies that strong
contextual clues borne out of excessive application in the interrogation processes enhance the
likelihood of false confessions. The other element of the use of contextual reinstatement to elicit
more specific memories, whether from a real event or imagination, is that it poses ethical
questions about the suspect‟s rights and potential detrimental psychological impact. These issues
must be considered because twisting some or all aspects of the environment can dramatically
affect whether or not suspects will ultimately disclose something, and to what extent. As with all
the work that remains to be done in this area, the evidence presented in this paper illustrates the
consideration that should be paid when using certain aspects of context cues to enhance the
suspect‟s memory, intentionally or by default, in ethical interview and interrogation processes.
Retrieval-induced forgetting affects memory accessibility patterns
Retrieval induced forgetting deals with the observation that the process of recalling some
information from memory hinders or slows down the remembering or recall of related
information. It becomes easier to recall specific information when an individual attempts to
recall specific information at a certain time in the future but at the same time retroactive
interference makes other information that is stored in the memory more difficult to recall. In an
interrogation of a witness or a suspect when some pressure is applied to recall details of an event,
the action of retrieving some information affects the other related information, hampers them in
the future. Whenever the interviewer asks the interviewee to concentrate on remembering some
aspects, details or interpretations of an experience, this results in blocking off the ability to recall
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aspects of the experience, which are different or inconsistent with the recalled experience. It can
be said that the act of retrieval alone modifies the possibility of access to memory content, albeit
if the content is retained. It can be utilized by interrogators to influence the testimony of an
interviewee as either favorable or otherwise by retrieving certain details selectively so that other
versions become less retrievable during subsequent rehearsals. However, uncertainty and
confusion are also the best evidence of the unreliability and persuasiveness of human memory.
The stored material may be less retrievable rather than removed from memory, and the sequence
of questioning has significant impact on later recall. This throws to waste beliefs that it is
possible for an interviewee to recall all that he or she wants if only the efforts are made to
attempt to do so or that early statements are always the most accurate ones. However, witnesses
build the contents of the memories during the retrieval exercise and can only regain access to
some aspects while they are denied others. Elements such as the framing, timing, and sequence
of the questions affect accessibility in the subsequent sequence. As a result, interview methods
that are designed to be either impartial or comprehensive can themselves influence which other
details may or may not be retrievable at a later date. Examining retrieval dynamics allow for a
better understanding of memory retrieval as well as its context necessities. Not even stored
memories are very definitive of how easily they will be retrieved as their accessibility is not
fixed but varies with recall attempts, which poses a question to any direct use of the claim that
eyewitness, can provide the details that are complete or accurate and illustrates how memory is
constructive even during attempts at recall. Interrogation always produces a memory
reconstruction of the interrogation based on the availability of stored files and not of stored files.
This context-sensitivity implies that the ability to retrieve information accurately is a strong
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function of the current conditions under which an organism seeks to recall the information, not
the conditions under which the information was initially encoded.
Metacognitive judgments influence confidence in recalled information
The metacognitive aspects of judgment impact the confidence of remembering
information. Whenever individuals attempt to recollect information about an event that took
place in the past, they make an evaluation of the performance of their memory system and it is
these metacognitive evaluations, which influence the amount of confidence that one has in the
content of the information that they are recalling. For instance, when a person possesses a
positive metacognitive judgment such as recalling that his or her memory is accurate, then he or
she will have increased certainty that the information in the memory is accurate. But as it was
mentioned before, confidence studies reveal that metacognitive judgments are not always
accurate predictors of memory accuracy. This results in people actually being very sure that they
remember something accurately even when it is not accurate or even distorted. This effect is
particularly relevant in the investigation interviews and interrogations, that is, witnesses and
suspects make metacognitive judgments during questioning that biases the confidence reports
given by them. A person who saw a crime can have no clear idea of the event but can make a
positive identification of the clarity of memory of a criminal. This then boosts their self-
confidence when identifying a suspect; even when their memory is distorted in some way.
Likewise, a suspect who was never involved in a crime but whose alibi is very weak will have
little to say about the matter while having a positive attitude toward the accuracy of their
memory. They then firmly provide alibi details known to be false which only point to their
guilty. The errors occur due to the fact that subjective confidence is not based on the objective
accuracy of remembering but based on the metacognitive experience of remembering. To
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enhance evaluations of eye-witness identification or suspect testimony, scholars suggest shifting
reliance on confidence reports made after recall, rather than during testimony, using open-ended
questioning procedures intended to increase objective, rather than subjective, reportage from the
witness or suspect, informing the individual against leaning on the assumption since recall is
likely to be vague, and educating the legal fact-finders on how to decipher between a muddled
memory and genuine metacognitive judgment. The ability to know why confidence may no
longer be correlated with accuracy has many implications for the legal system in determining the
credibility of witness and suspect statements.
Memory Distortion: Factors Altering Eyewitness Accounts
Leading questions introduce post-event misinformation effects
Another type of question-biasing questions that provide misleading information after an
event-has been found to influence the eyewitness memory and the reports given, this is referred
to as the misinformation effect. This happens when due to the leading questions, which make
suggestions that stimulate a change in the recall of the eyewitness due to exposure to wrong post
event details. For instance, if a witness of a car accident is later asked “How fast was the car
traveling when it ran through the stop sign?” but there was no stop sign at the intersection, it
leads a wrong presupposition into the eyewitness‟ memory. The eyewitness might then take this
misinformation from the leading question into the report of the actual accident event itself either
by recalling seeing a stop sign that was never actually present or estimating a higher speed on the
basis of the preconception that the driver disobeyed a stop sign. It has been established that
factors such as the choice of words when asking questions, when the misinformation is
introduced, assurance demonstrated by the person who is leading the questions and the like affect
the chances and extent of memory distortion. It is evident that participants are vulnerable to
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incorporating false information into their account of events even when they are informed that the
leading questions contain misleading facts. These were the case even when the study participants
were warned that they had been exposed to false information and were supposed to reject it. The
source from which the post-event misinformation is sourced also plays a role – misinformation
originating from a source that is considered to be reliable and trustworthy will be incorporated by
the people. This shows how highly pliable human memory can be and how suggestive leading
questions that introduce fatal misinformation can prejudge the verdict of an eyewitness in a
manner that is almost impossible to rectify even when the witness is informed of the incorrect
information. This is particularly crucial when questioning witnesses with a view of getting non-
biased, accurate accounts of specific events to reduce on memory distortion after the event.
Source monitoring errors create false memory phenomena
The first type of error which can result in false memories is source monitoring errors,
which are mistakes in identifying the source of the memory and thus giving rise to memories
which are not real but seem like genuine memories. In particular, when a person recalls an idea
or a fantasy, which has been produced internally, and then recognizes it as an event from the
outside world that has occurred, this is referred to as source monitoring. Such errors contribute to
the elucidation of various instances of the false memory effect where eyewitnesses are certain of
having witnessed certain events which in fact never occurred. There are several factors that
increase the chances of source monitoring errors and false memory in people. Information from
other sources, such as other witnesses or the media, which provides information that is not
accurate, may be incorporated with other genuine information, thereby creating false memories.
Of the wording, repetition and vividness of suggestions this has the likely effect. Particularly,
mental imagery that is produced when people receive misinformation may be especially likely to
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lead to later source monitoring confusion and hence, false recollection of imagined details as
experienced. Aspects that would determine the kind of attention being paid and selectiveness at
the time of occurrence also predispose a person to false memory in relation to the content of the
memory gap. Stress or fear may reduce attention focus in a way that central aspects of events are
encoded well while the peripheral aspects are not encoded at all, thus, making the person
sensitive to implanting false memories of the peripheral aspects of events. Like weapon focus,
weapon presence may lead to a direct focus towards a weapon during a crime rather than the
broader environment, reducing the ability to recall details of the scene and increasing the
likelihood they will be replaced with confabulations. Other cognitive and personality factors that
seem to be relevant to specific suggestibility and the general tendencies toward imagination
inflation may cause false memory effects associated with source monitoring errors in response to
misinformation or fabrication of details in the gaps within one‟s memory for an event. Thus it is
by the errors of source monitoring, which leads to the creation of false memory, explains the case
whereby eyewitness give the wrong account due to the various factors of memory distortion
whereby the individuals are not only lie but rather have a firm believer in the events that never
transpired as the memories portray.
Imagination inflation amplifies perceived reality of events
Imagination inflation is a term that describes the phenomenon where people use
imagination or visualization to think that something happened and they start having an inflated
opinion about the occurrence of that event in reality. Such an outcome has been illustrated in
various experiments including one where people who were instructed to imagine some events
that may have taken place in childhood, rated those events as likely to have occurred in their
childhood as events they were not instructed to imagine. This notion is the basis for the
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perception of the imagined events as the reality grew larger with time. This effect has
implications for the accuracy of eyewitness evidence in criminal inquiries and trials as witnessed,
if asked repeatedly, may unconsciously include fabricated details in recalling actual incidents.
The type of questions and information that one is exposed to after the event affects them and that
is why there are changes in evidence. The other things that carry a similar effect of boosting
confidence without enhancing accuracy include issues like asking questions more than once, or
even confirming feedback. Imagination inflation helps to improve the vividness of an event as
each time the individuals recall the event it strengthens neural connections even with successive
repetitions, which shows the strength of forgetfulness and distortion that characterizes human
memory. Ensuring that imagination inflation is not an issue when conducting interviews with
eyewitnesses entails having an understanding of the impact of imagination inflation and
employing the correct techniques of interviewing such as not biasing the interviewee with
leading questions or providing post-event information that could contaminate the original
information given by the eyewitness. Reconstructing the events in detail before the recording
enables witness to be accurate in their version of the events since they have not been influenced
by an inaccurate version recorded by another witness or law enforcement agency. And the ability
to accurately distinguish between actual and fabricated memories persists as a significant
problem but remains essential for maintaining the admissibility of testimonies in legal
proceedings. Freeing the imaginative faculty during the questioning process can lead to
contaminating the memory with false information – whether consciously or even unconsciously
– and not reveal a clear picture of the unadulterated facts of the actual event that one has seen.
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Individual Differences: Variability in Eyewitness Memory Processing
Age-related changes affect memory encoding and retrieval
Cognitive variation with age can be attributed to the variation in the memory encoding
and retrieval process. We will discuss how people‟s brain structure and the related cognitive
processes in the memory decline during the aging process. This is because the hippocampus and
the medial prefrontal cortex, which are responsible for memory storage and recall, lose volume
and neurons also deteriorate to reduce their capacity to transmit signals. The processes of
consolidation of new information in the long-term memory storage become gradual and more
energetically expensive because of the decline in the plasticity of the neuronal connections. For
one, older adults use less efficient encoding know-how in addition to adopting passive
techniques of acquiring particulars rather than engaging in active organizational processes such
as chunking related pieces of information into comprehensive units. These deficits occur due to
the decline in the strength of memory traces which decays at a faster rate and the decline of
neural connections used in accessing the stored memories due to aging. Many of the age-related
impairments such as hearing and vision loss also impair the quality of the perceptual inputs
provided at encoding. The nature of information that is to be remembered also plays a role in age
differences in memory and processing. The performance in memory for material that is random
and unrelated such as word list is characterized by a strong decrease with age while memory for
material that is meaningful and structured such as prose texts is characterized by a minor age
decline. Given that emotionally arousing information is more likely to be retained, especially if it
is gist based implications are to be made for preservation of functioning in the amygdala and
hippocampus. While the episodic memory is widely known to decline with age, semantic
memory skills such as, the ability to spell or to use the correct word in the right context may
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remain preserved or even enhance throughout the later years of life due to the increased
knowledge amassed through experience. Aging processes influence and are influenced by
baseline cognitive performance, education, genetics, health and lifestyle, and neuropathological
status. Superagers, for instance, are individuals who possess enhanced memory throughout the
later years of their lives compared with normal agers due to the fact that they retain youthful
brain wave activity. Aging is a multifaceted phenomenon, affecting multiple component
processes of memory encoding and retrieval, while, nevertheless, demonstrating different
manifestations in different individuals and contexts, some aspects of memory remaining
relatively spared.
Personality traits influence suggestibility to misinformation
Some people are more susceptible to integrating false information into their memories
than others, due to some personality factors referring to it as suggestibility. In particular, there
has been an interest on the Big Five dimensions of neuroticism, extraversion, openness,
agreeableness and conscientiousness, vis-à-vis their link with suggestibility. Neurotics or those
with negative affectivity and self-preservation concerns are vulnerable to influence by external
information that distorts memory, while normalcy have higher confidence in accurate memories
that are resistant to contamination by false details. Suggesting is significantly higher in extraverts
who are outgoing persons and engage actively with other people which may explain by the fact
that extraverts direct their attention outside them and do not need to search for memory recall to
check on whether what they have said is correct or not. The results suggest that the openness,
particularly in curious and imaginative persons, would enhance the willingness of people to
incorporate the fictional information into memory as a result of their openness to the new
experiences and cognitive flexibility as well as the desire of openness for taking risks when
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processing information. The results showed that the specific component of suggestibility where
disagreeable people scored higher is the sub-suggestibility index which is compatible with their
sympathetic disposition and the motive that proclaims the desire to maintain social harmony that
might lead to more cautious processing of what is said concerning past events. When comparing
the performance of conscientious people who scored high in orderliness and self-discipline,
participants in the study were found to have a better accuracy in remembering the details and
were less prone to memory distortions in the face of misinformation. It is also probably very
effective in protecting memory against attempts at persuading it from other sources, due to their
professionalism, and focus on detail, especially when dealing with information. The present
study demonstrates how personality factors derived from the Big Five model may help to explain
why some people are more easily influenced by misinformation when recalling an event they
have witnessed, while others may be less susceptible to memory distortions.
Cognitive abilities impact detail retention and recall
There is a need to realize that human memory particularly with regard to the eye witness
and details of a crime immensely vary from one person to the other. Working memory capacity,
perceptual speed and aspects of fluid intelligence for instance have been associated with the
accuracy and amount of identification made by eyewitnesses. Individuals with high WMS scored
have been demonstrated to be able to code more of such details about what they saw than those
with low WMS scores and able to retrieve exact details of such incidences later. This could be
because there is increased working memory capacity because it deals with encoding,
consolidation, and retrieval about information. While perceiving with high PS, the perceivers
also can encase more information at the same time in the dynamic witnessing situations, which
also supports deeper detail storage. In addition, it was identified that actual remembering errors
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and confabulations were reduced by the subjects with higher degree of fluid intelligence. They
are better only at the time of perceiving the events and better able to form proper complex
memory engrams and store it for the purpose of exact late recall. But there is need to discourage
over translation of the performance in the cognitive tests because there are people who may be
good in it but they have lost their memory or distorted especially when they were singled out to
witness certain terrible events. One must acknowledge that aptitude testing does help in
confirming the accuracy of the statement made by an eyewitness, however in an ideal method,
statement credibility is also taken into account along with the aspects like statement consistency,
evidence availability for the statement, use of appropriate interviewing techniques and
procedures along with other situational parameters. It was concluded that cognitive abilities do
influence the detail of eyewitness memory and its reliability; however the human memory is not
an entity and perfect instrument that could be quantified using intelligence tests and there cannot
be absolute standards that can determine the truth of the given eyewitness account.
Conclusion
Memory processes significantly shape eyewitness account reliability
Eyewitness testifying is usually a strong source of evidence in criminal trials, but due to
psychological studies highlighting that memory is not equivalent to a video camera and the ways
human memory works can impair the trustworthiness of eyewitness reporting. More
strategically, the mechanisms of memory, such as encoding, storage, and retrieval, are socially
constructed and not merely imposed on an eyewitness by others but are constructed by the
eyewitness at the time of the event. Cues that preside over a head event like lighting, time, focal
point, stress, expectation, and bias determine which aspects are encoded into memory and which
are reconstructed based on a priori assumptions and experience. Memories also fade due to
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several factors such as decay where information stored in memory gradually degrades or
interferences, where one memory interferes with another. Retrieval is also a reconstructive
process by which the eyewitness constructs bits of memory to form a coherent story with the
help of schemas and other knowledge structures that enable overweening, erasing, and memory
integration to happen unconsciously. In addition, post-event information that a subject ingests via
leading questions, co-witness interviews, or media can modify the stored memories through
misattribution or updating effects whereby eyewitness testimony is consequently contaminated
by misleading details. Evidence from various studies suggests that during different
interrogations, accounts can be influenced by making suggestions based on proposed „recall‟ of
events. Confidence and vividness of the emotional memories can distort perception and lead to
inflating the levels of accuracy and reliability. Though eyewitnesses may have full confidence in
their testimony, the principles of psychology and volumes of evidence from the twentieth century
conclusively prove that eye-witness accounts can be wholly unreliable and the whole process of
remembering falters when tested on the objective truth and it is imperative for the jury as well as
the judge to examine eyewitnesses and their statements with considerable skepticism and caution
especially in criminal trials where the individual freedom of an accused is at stake.
Interrogation methods must account for memory vulnerabilities
The techniques applied by the police and other security forces in the course of
interrogation must consider that memory is far from being perfect or even accurate and that it is
influenced by suggestibility. Studies in psychology have shown that people‟s memory is
susceptible to suggestion and bias, and thus, even in recounting an event, they are likely to get it
wrong in terms of how it is asked, the framing of the question, the environment in which the
question is posed, and new information that they may have come across in the course of the
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investigation among others. This memory vulnerability is the reason that other interrogation
tactics that are aimed at gaining confessions or statements can create false or unreliable ones if
pressure or suggestiveness is applied. For example, leading questions that imply guilt cause a
contamination of memory and makes the suspect begins to doubt his/her innocence against all
perceived proofs against him/her. Likewise, methods like delayed questioning, repetitive
questioning after days of seclusion may make the witnesses unconsciously contaminate their
evidence with assumptions or false postulations as the level of confidence in their actual
recollections dims. Based on what psychologists and neuroscientists know about memory and its
retrieval and reconstruction, ethical interrogation therefore needs techniques that do not involve
any form of pressure, biasing questions, or even trickery. It must be necessary for investigators to
interrogate suspects using questions that are not bias, and they should give the suspects enough
time to recall the events without pressuring them too much. Any memory lapse, hesitance or
ambiguity in the suspects‟ information should be further explored than assumed that they are
trying to hide some information. If there is a possibility, the author suggests using any
independent records or accounts which should be used for a soft cue rather than using the
suspect‟s memory override. Chief of all, the frailty of human memory presupposes that one
cannot assume that people lie when they either fail to be consistent or cannot remember things.
The right against self-incrimination means that suspect should not feel they have to lie or be
threatened with an IQ if they cannot recall information, they should be able to say those words “I
do not recall” without repercussions.
Continuous research needed to improve eyewitness interview techniques
Metacognitive judgments of the quality and accuracy of the memories that underlie the
information retrieved in a given test can influence how much confidence a person has in such
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information especially in stressful settings as in the case of the police interrogations. Because
people have an ability to monitor how easily any particular memory comes to mind, they use that
ease or fluency when making judgments about the accuracy of each memory. Regarding these
memories, it is easier and faster to recall them than when one is required to make a conscious
effort to retrieve memories from one‟s storage system, and as a result, they feel more valid and
are also associated with higher confidence. This involves metacognitive monitoring which occurs
automatically, although individuals may overestimate the accuracy of easily retrieved
information. Interrogations then, if police lead the questions that bring in to mind specific details
that might be false or planted by the questions, a suspect would feel more confident in answering
the questions than when giving a normal details. Furthermore, stress during interrogation
decreases metacognitive monitor which makes people rely on accessibility cues for evaluating
confidence. Stressed individuals also exhibit lower retrieval threshold and, as a consequence,
report more information overall but are even willing to provide the information they know may
be wrong. These effects can collectively form a so called „drift criterion‟, where the subjects
become more and more convinced in false or doubtful memories during the interrogation if they
experience high stress levels. The failures identified in this area might help in changing the
current interrogation strategies if the police interrogators‟ metacognitive knowledge about the
dangers of overconfidence is improved. The authors also suggested that reduction of these
memory phenomena may also possibly reduce the suggestibility of the suspects and in turn
prevent formation of false confessions due to confabulation and construction of false memories.
Enhancing the level of metacognition monitoring by both investigators and suspects during the
retrieval of memory is a significant factor bearing in mind the consequences of criminal
investigation. Altogether, metacognitive factors play a significant role when it comes to
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accessing stored memories under pressure and therefore, can have severe effects on justice if not
controlled.
