“It was a rainy day,” says Alyssa Azran '03, “and I was walking from the library to the campus center, when all of a sudden Professor Greenberg came up behind me and hit me with an umbrella for no reason.
“But I did not file any charges against him,” she smiles, “because this is a false memory.”
She's dramatizing a point: We all think we remember events that never actually occurred. These memories may have stemmed from stories we heard other people telling, or from watching television, or even from being led by
an interviewer.
Here is an example:
The eyewitness takes the stand. The defense attorney begins asking questions in a leading way. Then he interrupts, treating the eyewitness like a suspect and asking closed questions (“Did the man you saw have blue or brown eyes? Was he young or old?”). When he does ask an open-ended question (“Tell me what happened next”), he interrupts after seven seconds.
Not the way to go, assuming he wants useful information from the witness, who is
the main source in the case. Especially since this witness
is five years old.
Eyewitness testimony in children was the subject of an experimental honors seminar in the Psychology Department led by Seth Greenberg, Gilbert R. Livingston Professor of Psychology. He says the topic was chosen because it has public policy implications.
“We brought in national experts in research psychology
-people who are helping shape research and public policy,” he says. “Our idea was to 'up the ante'-to promote intellectual discussion in the classroom, to create an environ-
ment where motivated students could ask interesting questions and engage the speakers in conversation and debate.”
Thirteen sophomores, juniors, and seniors were handpicked for the course, and they found that the consequences of not understanding how we remember can be huge. Stephanie Block '03 says she was amazed at how easily memories can be implanted and how inaccurate eyewitness testimony is. “It appalls me that the legal system is so dependent on eyewitness testimony and that it's so inaccurate.”
Daryl McLeod '02 agrees: “Most people don't understand how corruptible the human mind is. And interviewers don't realize how easily they can corrupt witnesses' memories. This obviously has a huge bearing in a trial situation. And it affects aspects of our everyday life. For me, it's a
little unsettling that there's a possibility that events in my life that I was once certain occurred are potentially mere false memories.”
And Tina Canary '02 was surprised to learn how influential an interview technique can be-and how much an interviewer can manipulate testimony.
The term began with weeks of preparation, including readings of original research, reviews, lectures, and attending two movies-The Crucible, to get a sense of how rumors are passed and how people come to believe their own lies, and Memento, to see how people can trick themselves with their own memories. Every Tuesday two students would lead a discussion on the readings. “When someone asked an intriguing question, I would ask them to write it down for the speaker to address,” explains Greenberg. “The speaker came Thursday and gave a presentation which often ran over by an hour or two, because students had so many questions.”
McLeod recalls, “A lot of us were nervous-these were big names, and we were coming up with ideas they hadn't thought of. It was a great opportunity for us to speak directly with these researchers. It was a really interactive experience.” A biopsychology major, he plans to go to
medical school.
One of the visiting experts was Ron Fisher, who developed the cognitive interview technique and has been training police and special investigators in using it. As he explains, “Police receive almost no training in witness interviewing. This is their primary responsibility, and yet they don't understand the psychological process of getting information from someone else. Not surprisingly, they make mistakes.
“Police officers get their jobs because they're dominant, controlling guys,” he continues. “They're used to doing most of the talking. They ask leading questions and they are intimidating,” which means the witness tends to stop
volunteering information.
The best interviewers, he explains, are those who ask the fewest questions-and who listen while the witness is speaking. It's important to allow the witness to convey information in the way it was initially experienced, asking him or her to describe the layout of room, and re-creating the scene as much as possible. Eye contact, while valuable at the beginning of an interview to establish rapport, can easily be disruptive. In fact, it often helps to have witnesses close their eyes, in part to block out environmental distraction. Because memories are context-specific and associative, the more ways witnesses can think about the event, the better. Witnesses should also be encouraged not to edit their remarks.
Fisher says that in one week of learning this cognitive interview technique, anyone can overcome years of conditioning and get more accurate information than from a
standard police interview.
Fisher criticized the tactic of discrediting a witness by attacking the weakest link. When witnesses testimony is ruled out, jurors decide the case based on less information. This can result in a serious bias, usually against the prosecution. It also encourages courtroom discourse to be about peripheral issues. “If the witness saw the accused in the act of committing a crime, what difference does it make if she can't remember whether three or four shots were fired? But that's what defense attorneys focus on. There's an underlying assumption that if you forget how many shots were fired, you could forget anything. But the mind doesn't work that way.”
Research on eyewitness
testimony is also about getting psychological research into the law, where awareness of human psychology has not kept up with the latest findings. A U.S. Supreme Court justice, for example, recently said that a witness's level of confidence should be considered in what courts should be willing to accept. Yet research has shown there is no relationship between confidence level and accuracy of memory.
Robyn Fivush, another
visiting researcher, is an expert in early memory and connections to narrative, trauma, and coping-as in how children who lived through Hurricane Andrew remember and talk about this traumatic event.
“Early memories are a developmental matter,” said Fivush, “but they're also cultural. We all need the right cues to retrieve memories. Kids develop through interaction with parents, and there are individual differences in how families reminisce together. Some parents model information retrieval better and encourage it more.”
Eyewitnesses of abuse, on the other hand, are often from families where the abuse isn't discussed-and families that are usually less communicative all around. “The very kids we need to testify credibly may be at the highest risk of not doing so,” Fivush says. “The big lesson in doing forensic interviews is to be very careful how you ask questions.”
Says Greenberg, “For the students, this course helped open doors. They got a very human idea of what graduate study would be like. And they were energized, seeing how playing with ideas can be fun. They learned that psychology is not just an isolated discipline as they learned about visitors' professions.”
For Block, who has always been interested in psychology as well as law and children, the course was perfect. This spring, she is an intern in the special victims unit in the
district's attorney's office in nearby Troy, working with battered women and physically and sexually abused children. “I'm interviewing these children, and, thanks to the seminar, I feel very prepared.”
She adds that the course was the best she has taken. “No textbook or lecture can compare with having the prime researchers in the field right there in the classroom. Some actually got research ideas from the questions we asked.”
To Greenberg, the seminar was as good as the best graduate seminars-dynamic, intellectually curious, well prepared.
“It was a unique experience for all of us,” he says. “It got kids really thinking and talking, not just absorbing received wisdom. This is liberal education at its best-intellectual, lengthy, perceptive, informed, educated discussions confronting issues with no easy answers.”