co-witness memory study
Research at the University of Aberdeen into how we remember extraordinary events has received a vital boost thanks to funding from The Leverhulme Trust. A research team from Aberdeen, in collaboration with the University of Sussex, has received over £55,000 of funding towards a new type of laboratory-based memory study, which will involve over 200 participants. In prior research conducted at Aberdeen University, it has been found that one person's memory becomes similar to another person's memory following their discussion of a mutually experienced event. More specifically, the person who responds first during a discussion is most likely to influence the memory of another witness. The researchers will try to identify what it is about a person (e.g. personality, confidence) that makes them respond first in a discussion.
The project co-directors are Dr Amina Memon and Miss Fiona Gabbert in the Department of Psychology, at the University of Aberdeen and Dr Dan Wright of Sussex University is a collaborator. Dr Memon said: "When people discuss an event, what one person says can readily be incorporated into another person's memory report. This new grant, from The Leverhulme Trust, will allow us to explore this further and develop a model of eyewitness conformity to identify how this process of influence occurs and who is most susceptible to this form of influence.
It is human nature for people to discuss their shared experiences, especially of extraordinary events, such as witnessing a crime. Recent studies of several high profile cases have shown that even a single erroneous eyewitness can have significant negative influence on the accuracy of another eyewitness's testimony, if the witnesses come into contact with one another and discuss the criminal event. Although it is natural for people to discuss their experiences, it is highly problematic for the legal professionals, and our system of justice, if evidence - in the form of witness statements - becomes contaminated. The impact co-witness interaction will have on the reliability of subsequent individual testimonies will be one of the areas being explored in the Aberdeen research.
Previous research (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council) investigated how people's memories can become influenced during a discussion about a mutually experienced event under controlled laboratory-based conditions, for example, confidence in memory, perceived quality of witnessing conditions, etc, each of which could affect whether a witness is influenced by the report of another witness. This new series of experiments will further our understanding of how people discuss memories and, as a result, how memories become distorted in applied settings.
The collaborative study began on April 1, 2003 and will run until March 20, 2005. The team hope to recruit volunteers from the University community (during term-time) and during the holidays, volunteers from the general public. Anybody who is interested in volunteering should contact Miss Gabbert who is the research assistant on the project, tel: (01224) 274390, or email: f.gabbert@abdn.ac.uk