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22 January 2014

Can police technique done in TV shows be applied in real life?

Hello!

I’ve been watching police procedural and crime TV shows recently. The police use a technique to get more clues about crimes. They ask a witness to close their eyes and relive the scene minutes before the crime happened, hoping the witness would recall some detail he failed to report earlier. But I read somewhere (I forgot where) that we actually reconstruct them instead of recalling. This means that most of the time we just made up most of our memories?? So is this technique really effective in real life???

Elsa


Hello dear! I also enjoy watching police procedural TV shows. Criminal Minds is my favorite. And this technique that you described is what they also sometimes use in solving their cases. Just like you, I have wondered the efficiency of this technique in real life and fortunately, I have found the answer.

When we experience an event, we first encode it into our brain. The event details then are stored in our brain and when the time needs those information, we retrieve them. There are two types of memory retrieval. The first type is recognition. A cue is provided that lead to retrieving that memory. The second type is recall. No cue is available to help the person to remember the memory. These types of memory retrieval are seen when we take our exams. The multiple choice type of exam uses recognition, while fill in the blanks type uses recall.

During memory retrieval, however, false and distorted memories could be retrieved instead of the real ones. There have been numerous studies about false memories (Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Brainerd & Reyna, 2002; Storbeck & Clore, 2005). But for your question, Elsa, let’s focus on one study done by Peggy St. Jacques and Daniel Schacter (2013). In their study, they asked people to attend a self-tour in a museum. During the self-tour, they wore a camera that takes photos every 15 seconds. Two days after the tour, they showed photos to the same set of people and asked them to just reply if the photo is part of the tour or not. When they showed photos that actually do not belong to the tour, most remember the photo being part of the tour. This result is also similar on how we remember our childhood memories. Most of them are actually false memories already.

Applying these results to the technique the fictional police use in interviewing witnesses, I say the technique would not be as efficient as it was portrayed in the TV shows. Though a recent study suggest that closing the witness’ eyes would improve the accuracy of the memory, there is still a danger on false memory (Vredeveldta & Penrod, 2012). Leading questions during the interview could also have a great effect on the memory that the witness is trying to remember. These leading questions are similar to the false photo presented in the study (St. Jacques & Schacter, 2013). It is also important that the witnesses to not be exposed to other details of the case so that he could really recall what he actually saw. Though this technique is not recommended, there will always be a time when a witness’ statement is all the police have and it should not stop them from solving the case.

Senserely yours,
Jade C

References
Brainerd, C.J. & Reyna, V.F. (2002). Fuzzy-trace theory and false memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(5), 164-169.
Roediger, H.L. & McDermott, K.B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 21(4), 803-814. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.21.4.803
St. Jacques, P.L. & Schacter, D.L. (2013). Modifying memory: Selectively enhancing and updating personal memories for a museum. Psychological Science, 24(4), 537-543 doi: 10.1177/0956797612457377
Storbeck, J. & Clore, G.L. (2005). With sadness comes accuracy; With happiness, false memory: Mood and the false memory effect. Psychological Science, 16(10), 785-791. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01615.x
Vredeveldta, A. & Penrod, S. (2012). Eye-closure improves memory for a witnessed event under naturalistic conditions. Psychology, Crime & Law, 19(10), 893-905. doi:10.1080/1068316X.2012.700313

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