Often, investigators rely on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and they give compelling testimony from a legal point of view. There are cases when eyewitnesses attribute details, events, and actions that did not happen at all. Here, the human factor plays an important role; that is, sometimes it happens that eyewitnesses are mistaken in their testimony, especially in details. Thus, although eyewitness accounts are actively used in investigations, they cannot be as reliable as possible.
People’s memories are not accurate because of the properties of human memory. There is a link to a key object or action, which forms the eyewitness’s interpretation of what they saw. Professor Elizabeth Loftus showed that eyewitness memories are affected; for example, if a weapon is used at a crime scene, they focus on the weapon and, as a result, are worse at remembering other details (The conversation, 2017). This suggests that eyewitnesses do not remember all the details but only those which influenced them, making their interrogation less reliable.
The first approach is based on the theory of two memory recognition processes. First, the memory must be restored to the context in which the item occurred. Second, the memory needs to get information about where and when the event occurred. Jacoby and Dallas manipulated familiarity by presenting the training material either in the same modality (visual representation) or in a different modality (auditory representation) than the test material (Reed, 2013). As a result, changing the modality made the material almost unfamiliar and reduced memory productivity.
The second approach is based on the fact that the memories are all different, and the arguments in favor of other processes are not correct. That is, there is an episodic and semantic memory. Subjects are asked to recall items from a specific time and place. The discovery that patients with amnesia performed much better on indirect tests than on direct ones was evidence of the difference between episodic and semantic memory. (Reed, 2013). It turns out that factual information is forgotten faster than information about actions and skills.
In conclusion, the testimony of eyewitnesses is a somewhat controversial and ambiguous approach to the investigation. Since the readings are influenced by many factors, such as memory, details of what happened, and personal perception as well as the human factor. In this regard, in addition to the testimony of eyewitnesses, it is also necessary to have additional options that will more accurately indicate and outline the situation.
References
Reed, S., K. (2013). Cognition: Theories and Application. (9th Ed.). Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
The Conversation. (2017). People make terrible eyewitnesses – but it turns out there’s an exception. Web.