Memory and memory-facilitating techniques
Research on human memory has a long tradition. Weaknesses in memory, such as forgetting, can be troublesome enough in our everyday lives, but in some situations, inaccurate memory reports can have devastating consequences. In legal contexts, inaccurate memory reports can, in the worst case, lead to the conviction of innocent people. Many investigations, such as police investigations and asylum applications, rely on people giving complete and accurate statements. Legal psychology research can provide important insights into the human ability to remember and report, the interview methods that should be used to obtain accurate information, and the sources of error that can affect people's statements.
Our memory is fantastic. We can remember what happened at work yesterday and we can recall specific events from our childhood. But our memory is also fallible and malleable. It doesn't work like a video camera that records and stores all our experiences and then allows us to replay particular events when we are asked about them. Our memory is selective, meaning that we only remember certain parts of an event. Our memory is also reconstructive, which means that every time we are asked about an event, we must actively reconstruct the past. In addition, our memory is integrative, which means that when we do not remember everything about an event, we fill in the gaps in our memory with our reasoning skills to make sense of the event. These completely natural memory errors can have serious consequences in an investigative context and we in CLIP have therefore conducted several major research projects on memory and memory facilitation techniques. The results of our memory research have had an impact on a wide range of training courses for legal practitioners, both through lectures by CLIP members and scientific texts written by CLIP members. Our research results have also attracted the attention of national and international media.
Factors and situations that affect people's memory performance
Some of our research focuses on factors that affect people's memory performance, such as age, social influences and the influence of alcohol. For example, CLIP has conducted research on earwitnesses. Eyewitnesses are people who have heard, but not seen, an offender, and could therefore provide information to help the police identify the offender. However, research shows that both adults and children have difficulty recognizing a foreign voice, which means that earwitnesses' voice identification data should be treated with great caution. CLIP has also previously conducted research on the effects of alcohol on witness testimony and found that people who were under the influence of alcohol at the time they witnessed a crime (up to 1.0 per mille) are no worse at later describing the event or identifying the perpetrator than sober people.
Interviewing and memory facilitating techniques
Another strand of memory research focuses on methods that improve people's memory performance; i.e. how to help people remember more information about what they have experienced while increasing the accuracy of what they remember. To this end, we are exploring various memory-enhancing interview techniques, such as Cognitive Interviewing (CI) and Self-Administered Interviewing (SAI©). In line with extensive international research, we have found that CI helps both children and adults give more complete and accurate testimony. We have also found that different parts of the cognitive interview have different benefits depending on the situation and person, suggesting that the interview method can be used in a flexible way. SAI© is a method of interviewing based on interviewees conducting a written interview with themselves. International studies have shown that SAI© has positive memory effects for witnesses of different ages and we have therefore translated the method into Swedish and conducted studies with both adults and school-age children. In addition, we have tested the method as a tool in interviews with people who do not speak the same language as the interviewer.
Interviews with people who speak a different language
In an increasingly globalized world, we increasingly find ourselves in situations where we need to communicate with people who do not fully understand our language. In police investigations, this can come into play when people who are not fluent in Swedish become witnesses to, or victims of, crime. It can sometimes be difficult to quickly find an interpreter to assist in the investigative interview and these people may therefore need to be interviewed in Swedish, even though Swedish is not their mother tongue. We have compared these two approaches (interrogation with an interpreter and interrogation in Swedish as a second language) with an innovative interviewing method called SAI©. Overall, SAI© resulted in testimonies that were about as detailed as interpreted testimonies, and both were more detailed than testimonies in Swedish. However, the testimonies given via SAI© were slightly less accurate than testimonies given in Swedish and with the help of an interpreter.