The Modern View of Human Memory and its Implications

1. The Modern View of Human Memory and its Implications Martin A. Conway Department of Psychology City University London Email: Martin.Conway.1@City.ac.uk martinconway1@mac.com

2. The modern view of memory has been described by many memory researchers including Professor Alan Baddeley of the University of York (the U.K’s leading memory researcher), Professor Dan Schacter of Harvard University (one of the leading senior memory researchers in the U.S.), Professor Morris Moscovitch of the University of Toronto (one of the world’s foremost authorities on the neuropsychology of human memory) and extensively in my own work.

3. For a recent overview relevant to legal cases see Howe, Knott, & Conway (2018), Memory Miscarriages of Justice, London: Routledge. • The modern view in summary is this:

4. Memories are mental ‘constructions’. They contain various types of information, including conceptual knowledge, inferences, imagery, very often visual in nature. (They are often referred to, in the literature, as episodic or autobiographical memories).

5. Unconscious Inferences • Lets just take a moment to consider what this means. • Let’s start with vision. In reality there is no such thing as colour. There are just wavelengths of light. Only a brain can see colour.

6. The same is true of sound. Sounds are simply vibrations of the air. Only a brain can turn them into sounds. • Only a brain can hear a tree fall …

7. The brain essentially makes up much of the world and it does so by complex unconscious chains of inferences of which we cannot be consciously aware. • The same is true of memory. Any specific memory contains much that is non-consciously inferred, i.e. filled in by the brain.

8. To take an example from my own memory: • I remember, quite well, the day of my Ph.D. viva (examination), some 36 years ago, in 1983. • But what was I wearing? I have no idea. What were the examiners wearing, I haven’t a clue. • Nevertheless in my memory we are all clothed (it would have been a very strange viva otherwise).

9. Details, such as clothes, the weather, what someone said, etc., are often non-consciously inferred by the brain and that is why when it is possible to check such details with external evidence they are often found to be wrong. • And it is also why some memories can be wholly false.

10. Indeed the process of memory construction in terms of neurological processing is complex and slow. • Many processes, such as word recognition, take just a few hundred milliseconds. • Construction of memories takes seconds and sometimes longer.

11. Neuropsychologically memories are generated in a wide and complex set of interlocking neural networks distributed throughout the neo-cortex and mid-brain, reflecting their constructive nature and the multiple sources of information they contain.

12. Because of this complexity in the brain memories are particularly prone to the effects of brain damage, psychological illnesses, pharmacological interventions, alcohol and other recreational drugs. These effects are always disruptive, sometimes extremely so, leading to amnesia, memory errors, false memories, various déjà states, delusions and hallucinations.

13. Memories represent only short time slices of experience, they are ‘time -compressed’, and because of this they never fully represent an experience, rather the fragments derived from experience that they contain are more a ‘sample’ of experience than a (full or literal) record of it.

14. Memories then often contain information that is non-consciously inferred by the brain, and sometimes consciously inferred, such as dates. Because of their constructed nature memories are prone to error, distortion, confabulation and even wholly false memories may at times arise. Indeed, all these memories have been found to be easily induced under laboratory conditions and, most importantly, people have been shown to act on the basis of erroneous and/or false memories.

15. The wedding experiments. • The balloon experiments. (An example of a false memory … from a barrister!)

17. As a general rule the more specific and detailed a memory the more the possibility for error increases. • This is especially the case when a rememberer is pressurized to be more specific, i.e. by repeated questions, implicit demands, use of recognition methods, hypnosis, etc. (see Memory & The Law).

18. Finally, the current view of the function of memories emphasize their role in ‘meaning making’ (making sense of our lives and the lives of others, social interactions, etc.), in guiding behaviour (their influence on the future) and in emotion regulation.

19. For further key points about memory see the executive summary of a 2008 report: Memory & The Law. • This was compiled by a working party of the Research Board of the British Psychological Society, which I chaired. • The WP consisted of memory researchers, barristers, and QCs. It was also advised by an international team of memory experts.

21. Two Key Points • Memories can be ‘true’ (in that they are of experienced events) but their content can be wrong and/or false. • Very detailed memories are most probably not possible and their content should be treated with caution.

22. So how do we tell if a memory or it’s contents are wrong/false - currently we cannot, unless there is some reliable independent evidence. • Even then considerable caution is required.

23. Before : • MR JUSTICE LEGGATT • - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - • Between : • Gestmin SGPS S.A. Claimant • - and - • (1) Credit Suisse (UK) Limited • (2) Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Limited Defendants

24. Neutral Citation Number: [2013] EWHC 3560 (Comm)

25. Evidence based on recollection • 15. An obvious difficulty which affects allegations and oral evidence based on recollection of events which occurred several years ago is the unreliability of human memory. • 16. While everyone knows that memory is fallible, I do not believe that the legal system has sufficiently absorbed the lessons of a century of psychological research into the nature of memory and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. One of the most important lessons of such research is that in everyday life we are not aware of the extent to which our own and other people’s memories are unreliable and believe our memories to be more faithful than they are. Two common (and related) errors are to suppose: (1) that the stronger and more vivid is our feeling or experience of recollection, the more likely the recollection is to be accurate; and (2) that the more confident another person is in their recollection, the more likely their recollection is to be accurate.

26. Thank You The End