There is so much research on how trauma/highly emotional experiences affect the way we encode memories. How do forensic psychologists work with such situations to find truths and assess people?
Any info/article links are much appreciated!
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YES! Elizabeth Loftus is one of the most well-known experts when talking about memories, especially eye witness testimonies. Her had work in various crime investigations. She had also observed the behavior of well-known serial killers like Ted Bundy.
Loftus and colleagues conducted several experiments in w/c they found out that implausible events could be made more plausible by having the experimenters provide false feedback to the participants, who read articles telling of the implausible events as if they had actually happened to other people
2 steps that must occur to interpret false events as true memories
1. event must be made to seem as plausible as possible
2. give info. that helps individual believe that the event could have happened to them personally
Reference:
Cicarelli, S., & White, J. (2012). Chapter 6 - Memory. Psychology (3rd ed.). Pearson Education.
This is a crucial point and one well worth mentioning.
Our knowledge of the fragility of memory tends to come from landmark studies in psychology like Loftus and Palmer's studies on the reconstructive nature of memory. What their research showed was that memories were reconstructions of events that happened. Thus, memory was not as many had supposed and did not act like a recording and some might record on video cassette (Anyone remember those? 😂), and that these reconstructions were highly vulnerable to manipulation either intentionally or unintentionally.
These insights have led to significant alterations in the way witnesses are interviewed following incidents. Leading questions are carefully eliminated so that the witness themselves can describe in their own words exactly what is in their memory. However, rarely will a conviction come down to solely an eyewitness report, there should be other evidence that supports the narrative.
In light of these realisations, investigators now work with what's called the cognitive interview technique.
This link and article outline what a cognitive interview is, how it is used, and the benefits and development of the cognitive interview of time.
There are also a number of studies showing the benefit of the cognitive interview, and some of these are mentioned in the link below.
http://www.psychteacher.co.uk/memory-AS/page99/cognitive-interview.html
A link that explains explans the nature of the experiment by Loftus and Palmer and demonstrated the reconstrcutive nature of memory.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/loftus-palmer.html