Eyewitness and Repressed Memories

Psychologists have long demonstrated the fallibility of eyewitness testimony. A famous example is when someone enters the classroom and appears to shoot the professor, then runs off. The professor then pops up and asks the class to write down everything they saw and heard. The eyewitness accounts never agree. (For obvious ethical and safety reasons, this kind of demonstration should no longer be conducted.)

More recently, Elizabeth Loftus has conducted a long series of studies on eyewitness testimony. She has described how, after repeated and leading questioning, eyewitness accounts become more and more detailed. Further, as more questions are asked, eyewitnesses become more and more convinced of the truthfulness of their answers. However, her experiments show that what many subjects (around 20%) are remembering is not the event itself but the questions about the event.

Another related topic that has become very fashionable recently is repressed testimony. In fact, some states have passed laws allowing criminal proceedings to occur on the basis of repressed testimony. Repressed testimony occurs when someone "remembers" an event that occurred in the past and that had been locked up for a long time. Typical examples include childhood memories of sexual abuse or of witnessing traumatic events. There is a great deal of controversy raging right now about whether repressed memories are truly memories or artifacts. Loftus has recently succeeded in creating completely false memories in subjects by embedding false information within a larger story that is completely true (except for the one falsehood). Subjects, during debriefing, are shocked to learn that their memories are not veridical. Interestingly, subjects' accounts of the false memories contain significantly fewer words than their accounts of true memories. Perhaps in recognition of Loftus's research, the AMA recently announced that accounts of repressed memories in therapy should not be accepted at face value.

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