Eyewitness Testimonies: False Memory Analysis

From a cognitive level of analysis child eyewitness testimonies can be reliable and credible because children are less suggestible to the formation of false memories according to the Fuzzy Trace Theory. Suggestibility is the degree to which encoding, storage and retrieval of information when reporting events is manipulated by internal or external factors (Bruck & Ceci, 1997). False memories are a recollection of an event that has not actually occurred. On the other hand child eyewitness testimonies can be unreliable and incredible because children may be more prone to the suggestive influences of leading questions when being interviewed to testify.

On one hand empirical research suggests that a child’s eyewitness testimony can be considered
credible and reliable. Reyna and Brainerd introduced the Fuzzy Trace Theory, in which they hypothesized that there are two parallel memory representations in the mind to encode information, called the verbatim and gist traces (Brainerd & Reyna, 2002). The performance of memory is based on the retrieval of both gist and verbatim traces. Verbatim traces are a literal representation of memory, in which details of an event are encoded in the mind, whilst gist traces focus on the meaning of the event that is encoded. Verbatim retrieval does not support the idea of false memories because recalled information reflects the actual events. However gist retrieval supports the notion of false memories because it is the meaning of an event that is recalled and this may differ from person to person due to familiarity and interpretation of one’s experience. Thus gist retrieval is not an accurate recollection of the original event.

Empirical research shows that adults are more suggestible to false memories than younger children.
In a study carried out by Brainerd and Reyna in 2007, first, fifth and ninth grade students were presented a list of words called the ‘study list’ (as cited in Association for Psychological Science, 2007). Many of the words from the ‘study list’ were related to each other, by belonging to certain categories such as animals or furniture, whilst there were other words, which were unrelated ‘filler’ words. After a short break, the students were presented with a new ‘test list’, which was composed of study list words, new words belonging to the aforementioned categories, and new distracter words that were unrelated to the study list. Then students were asked to identify if they had previously heard the word from the ‘test list’ in the ‘study list’. Brainerd and Reyna found that if the ‘test list’ had words of semantic relation to the ‘study list’, older students are more likely to assert that they have heard it before. In conclusion younger children are unable to connect the meaning of words or events compared to adults or adolescents. Furthermore older children and adults are more suggestible to the formation of false memories as they are more vulnerable to making semantic relation memory
mistakes.

This study and theory can be applied to child eyewitness testimonies because in a testimonial situation a child is highly required to use gist retrieval, as they must understand the event semantically. However one may argue that a child lacks the ability or sophistication to interpret the event, thus they tend to use verbatim retrieval of information, which suppresses the formation of false memories. Therefore the eyewitness testimony of younger children is considered to be reliable and credible.