Memory Construction, Suggestibility Effect And Eyewitness: From Laboratory To Legal Contexts

One of the most intriguing debates in psychology concerns the permanence and accuracy of recovered memories. Yet, despite a prodigious level of research activity, our understanding of the interaction between old and new memories or between memories and new experience remains relatively incomplete. A topic of traditional interest for both theoretical and applied aspects of memory has been the study of eyewitness suggestibility. Witness' memory performance is affected by the fact that they retell their statement multiple times, for example to the police or other personnel in the justice system and to their family or friends. The notion of interrogative suggestibility usually designate “the extent to which, within a closed social interaction, people come to accept messages communicated to them during formal questioning, and as a result their behavioral response is affected in such a way as to either accept or resist suggestion”. Not only how many times a recall is shared (repetition), but also how an event is shared influence the memory of that event.