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EYEWITNESS MEMORY: ITS PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS

© Michael Decaire

In today's court system one of the strongest pieces of evidence, or that most commonly accepted as fact by a jury, is eyewitness testimony. When correct, eyewitness accounts can aid in the conviction of many guilty parties. However, when incorrect, eyewitness testimony can do extremely severe damage. There is numerous cases of false identification in the psychological literature, perhaps no case is more strikingly relevant and ironic then that involving psychologist Donald Thomson.

Donald Thomson is an Australian psychologist who was doing research on eyewitness testimony. His research showed that witnesses were influenced quite often by something as simple as the clothes the criminal was wearing. If someone else was wearing similar clothes as the offender they were very likely to be mistaken as the offender. One day Dr. Thomson was picked up by the local police and placed into a lineup. At that time he was picked out by a woman who claimed she was a rape victim of his. What was eventually discovered that at the exact moment the woman was being raped, Dr. Thomson was on the television leading a discussion on eyewitness testimony that included such reliable witnesses as the assistant commissioner of the police. What had in fact transpired was that the woman was raped at the same time that Dr. Thomson appeared on the television. Indeed she did recognize his face, but, in no way was he associated with her unfortunate victimization.

This begs the question of what we can do about eyewitness memory. It does indeed appear to be unreliable. Should it be excluded all together without co-oberating evidence? No, probably not. There is however techniques that can be used by the police in order to optimize eyewitness memory. One such technique is the "cognitive interview." The cognitive interview is a questioning technique designed to optimize accurate retrieval of experienced information. There is four components or 'retrieval mnemonics' in the cognitive interview:

(1) The questioner should attempt to mentally recreate the environmental and contacts thats occurred at the time in which the crime was experienced.

(2) The officer should attempt to encourage the reporting of every single detail. Even if it seems to be completely irrelevant. If it occurred during or surrounding the incident it should be reported.

These two components are based on the principle that with increased overlap and consistency between the events of the crime and the recreated situation there is an increased likeliness that recall will be more significant.

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