Memory does not store an event and it; it the event each time from and expectations.
Reconstruction is efficient and it means that each retrieval is an opportunity for the memory to change.
A witness questioned four times has not consulted a record four times; she has rebuilt an account four times.
Each rebuilding whatever was present in the room, including the wording of the question.
Asking how fast the cars were going when they smashed produces higher estimates than when they hit.
A week later, the smashed group is more likely to report broken glass that was never there.
The witness is not lying and cannot tell the difference, which is the finding that matters legally.
is the property courts rely on most and the one least related to accuracy.
rises with repetition, with feedback and with the passage of time, none of which improves the memory.
A witness told that she picked the suspect the police suspected becomes markedly more certain by the trial.
The itself has not changed, and the jury sees only the certainty.
Remedies exist and they are procedural rather than psychological.
An officer who does not know which person is the suspect cannot signal it, deliberately or otherwise.
A confidence statement taken at the moment of preserves a number that later events cannot .
Both measures are cheap, both are well evidenced and neither is universally used.
Resistance comes less from disbelief than from the about cases already decided.
A procedure adopted now is an admission about every obtained before it.
That is an uncomfortable inference and it is not a reason to keep obtaining s badly.