Snap Shot
- The question: How do people remember the events of their own lives, including where they were and what they were doing at a given time, and what does the research mean for testimony and for alibis?
- What the research shows: Autobiographical memory is organized around lifetime periods, general events, and specific details, and is reconstructed in the service of the rememberer’s current self and goals. Personally significant and distinctive events are generally well remembered, while ordinary days blur together, dates are reconstructed rather than recalled, and innocent people asked about their whereabouts weeks later often give alibis that are incomplete, wrong in part, or changed over time.
- What it does not show: It does not show that personal memory is generally unreliable, that a changed or mistaken alibi is evidence of innocence, or that a consistent, confident alibi is true. Research on groups cannot say whether a particular person’s account of his or her own life or whereabouts is accurate or honest.
- The law: Expert testimony is governed by Rule 702 (amended 2023), Kumho, and Houser, and in Arizona by Rule 702, Chapple, and Nordstrom; experts may not opine on credibility (Lindsey). Alibi notice is required by Fed. R. Crim. P. 12.1, R.C.M. 701(b)(2), and Ariz. R. Crim. P. 15.2(b); alibi is not an affirmative defense, and the prosecution retains the burden of proving the accused’s presence.
- Issues for each side: Prosecutors can explain that personally significant events, including victimization, are often well remembered in their gist, and may test an alibi against documentary evidence without presuming that its errors show guilt; defense counsel can explain why innocent people misremember mundane days and revise alibis, without claiming that an alibi’s errors prove innocence.
Autobiographical memory is memory for one’s own life: specific episodes, such as the evening of a party, and broader knowledge about oneself, such as where one lived and worked over a period of years. It draws on episodic memory for particular events (see the companion paper Episodic Memory) but is organized around the self, so what a person remembers about his or her life is shaped by that person’s goals and identity.
Autobiographical memory reaches court whenever a person testifies about his or her own experience: a complainant describing what happened to her, an accused describing his movements, a witness placing an event in the year she changed jobs. Alibis pose a distinctive version of the task, in which a suspect must reconstruct where he or she was at a particular time, often weeks later and for a day that seemed unremarkable.
This paper describes how autobiographical memories are constructed, why personally significant events are remembered differently from routine ones, how people remember dates, and research on generating and evaluating alibis, followed by the limits of the research and the governing law, including alibi notice rules.
Memory for One’s Own Life: The Self-Memory System
The most influential account of autobiographical memory is the self-memory system (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). On this account, autobiographical knowledge is organized in layers. At the broadest level are lifetime periods, such as “when I was stationed in Germany” or “after the divorce.” Within them are general events, which may be repeated activities (“Friday nights at the base club”) or extended ones (“the summer I worked construction”). At the most specific level is event-specific knowledge: the images, sounds, and sensations of a particular moment. A specific memory is not retrieved whole; it is assembled when needed by moving through these layers, guided by the cue and by what the person is trying to remember.
The model’s second component is the working self, the person’s current goals and self-image, which shapes attention at the time of an event and the search for it later. Conway (2005) described autobiographical memory as balancing correspondence, fidelity to what was experienced, against coherence, consistency with the person’s present understanding of self. That balance ordinarily serves people well, but it means personal memory did not evolve to serve as an impartial archive, and present beliefs and concerns can shape which details come to mind and how events are framed, without any intent to mislead.
Personal Significance: What Is Remembered and What Is Not
Events that matter to a person, that are distinctive, emotional, or consequential, are generally remembered better than routine ones, and their gist is often retained for years. Events that are unremarkable at the time are often not encoded in detail at all, and ordinary days tend to merge into general knowledge of what one usually does. In a diary study in which participants recorded events from their own lives and the lives of a significant other, behavior that was unusual for the other person was remembered better than behavior typical of that person (Skowronski et al., 1991; see Burke et al., 2007). Across the lifespan, adults recall few memories from early childhood, many from recent years, and a disproportionate number from adolescence and early adulthood (Rubin et al., 1986; see Childhood Amnesia and The Reminiscence Bump).
Significance is not the same as accuracy for every detail. Research testing vivid memories of learning about shocking public events against records made at the time has found that such memories can change over time as much as ordinary memories while the rememberer’s confidence and sense of vividness remain high (Talarico & Rubin, 2003). Those studies concerned hearing the news of a public event, not being a victim of or participant in a crime (see Flashbulb Memories). Suggestion can also lead some people to report childhood events that, according to their families, did not occur, as discussed in False Memory. The research on autobiographical memory therefore supports two conclusions together: personally significant events are often well remembered in their essentials, and vividness and confidence do not by themselves establish that a particular detail is correct.
Memory for Dates and Timing
People rarely store the date of an event as part of the memory. Reviews of research on memory for time conclude that people usually reconstruct when something happened from contextual information, such as the season, what else was going on in their lives, or the day-of-week pattern of their routine, together with general knowledge of how time is structured (Friedman, 1993). The result is that people often know a great deal about an event but place it wrongly in time. In diary research summarized by Burke et al. (2007), participants who recalled more details of an event dated it more accurately, and many identified the correct day of the week while missing the date by one or two weeks (Skowronski et al., 1991). Systematic errors in dating, including the tendency to place events closer to or further from the present than they were, are discussed in The Telescoping Effect.
A complainant may be confident about what happened but uncertain about the month; an accused may be confident about his routine but uncertain whether a particular evening followed it. Being unsure or wrong about a date is expected and is not, on its own, a sign that the remembered event never happened. At the same time, a date reconstructed from inference is only as good as the inference, and documents such as messages, receipts, work schedules, and phone records are often better evidence of timing than memory.
Reconstructing One’s Own Whereabouts: Alibi Memory
An alibi is a claim that the accused was somewhere else when the offense occurred. Researchers distinguish a true alibi, given by an innocent person who accurately recalls his or her whereabouts, from two kinds of untrue alibi: a fabricated alibi, which is deliberately false, and a mistaken alibi, given in good faith by an innocent person who misremembers (Burke et al., 2007). The distinction matters because alibi errors are often treated as lies.
Generating an alibi is demanding: an innocent person asked about an afternoon weeks earlier is usually being asked about a day that held no significance at the time and that he or she had no reason to notice or rehearse (Burke et al., 2007). In experiments in which innocent participants were asked where they had been at particular times about a week earlier, cues framed around a time produced less accurate reports than cues framed around a location and led participants to rely on their knowledge of what they usually did, accuracy was lower when their actual whereabouts departed from their routine, and confidence was high regardless of accuracy (Leins & Charman, 2016). In another study, participants gave a truthful alibi for an afternoon three weeks earlier, then searched for evidence of where they had actually been and retold the alibi a week later; participants were largely inconsistent across the features of their alibis, some features more than others, and those who were inconsistent were less confident and recalled the period less vividly (Strange et al., 2014). A review argued that one honest error can cascade as investigators, prosecutors, and jurors in turn read it as deception (Crozier et al., 2017).
Corroboration is also harder than people expect. Research on innocent suspects’ alibis has found that the supporting evidence they can produce is often weak, such as the word of a friend or family member rather than evidence that is difficult to fabricate (Olson & Charman, 2012). Alibi witnesses have memory limits of their own and can be influenced by later information: in a field experiment, people who had correctly confirmed that a companion never left the room were less likely to stand by that confirmation in writing days later (47%, compared with 81% when no incriminating evidence was mentioned) after learning that the companion had been identified from a photograph or appeared on camera footage, although oral corroboration did not differ (Sauerland et al., 2023). At children’s summer camps, children generally confirmed accurately that an adult had stayed in the room, but many failed to report that an adult had left, and all inaccurate reports of an adult leaving came in answer to yes-or-no questions (Price et al., 2026).
How Alibis Are Evaluated
Research on alibi believability has organized alibis by the type of corroboration. In a proposed taxonomy, person evidence ranges from a motivated familiar person, such as a family member who might lie, to a stranger, who has no motive to lie but may be mistaken, to a non-motivated familiar person, while physical evidence ranges from easy to difficult to fabricate; in mock-juror ratings, an alibi with no corroboration was least believable, and one supported by hard-to-fabricate physical evidence and a non-motivated acquaintance was most believable (Olson & Wells, 2004). Later work found that a suspect’s specific knowledge of what happened where he or she claimed to be can be judged as believable as strong witness evidence (Nieuwkamp et al., 2023).
Consistency strongly affects evaluation. In a mock-juror study, consistent alibis were judged more believable and the defendant was viewed more favorably than when the alibi changed, while the timing of disclosure had few effects (Allison et al., 2024). In another study, a judicial instruction on alibis reduced ratings of the likelihood of guilt, although participants recalled the instruction poorly (Allison et al., 2025). Because a changed alibi tends to be read as a lie, and because research on ordinary-day recall shows that innocent participants’ alibis often change, evaluators face a real risk of treating an honest memory error as evidence of guilt (Burke et al., 2007; Crozier et al., 2017). The opposite risk is also real: a fabricated alibi can be rehearsed and kept consistent, possibly more consistent than an innocent person’s. Consistency, confidence, and detail do not, on their own, sort true from false alibis (see Detecting Deception).
Limits of the Evidence
Most autobiographical memory research relies on diary studies, self-report, and campus tasks with students. Alibi experiments usually concern ordinary days a week or a few weeks earlier, without the stakes and pressure of a real accusation, and mock-juror studies use written vignettes rather than trials. Research on real cases is limited, and the actual rate at which innocent and guilty suspects give inaccurate alibis is unknown. Flashbulb memory studies concern public events rather than personal victimization. The research shows what tends to happen across groups under particular conditions; it cannot determine whether a particular person’s account of his or her own life or whereabouts is accurate, mistaken, or false.
Questions to Ask About This Research
When Strange et al. (2014) is cited to show that innocent alibis change, counsel should ask what exactly was counted: participants were asked to imagine being suspects and recalled an ordinary afternoon three weeks earlier, so the finding concerns the normal inconsistency of memory for a mundane period, not what a person would do when accused of a serious crime. When Leins and Charman (2016) is offered, counsel should ask whether it applies to this person, including whether the day in question departed from the person’s routine and how the person was first asked about it, since the study found that time-based questions and departures from routine lowered accuracy. When Olson and Wells (2004) or Allison et al. (2024) is used to argue that an alibi is or is not believable, counsel should ask what the study design permits: these were ratings of written scenarios by students or online participants, which show how people tend to judge alibis, not whether a given alibi is true. These questions are explained in “Reading Research Claims: A Guide for Attorneys” on this site.
Autobiographical Memory and the Law
Federal and Military Standards
Expert testimony about autobiographical memory and alibi generation is governed by Federal Rule of Evidence 702, as amended December 1, 2023, which requires the proponent to show the court that it is more likely than not that the rule’s requirements are met, including a reliable application of reliable methods. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) made the trial judge a gatekeeper, and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael (1999) extended that obligation to all expert testimony, including technical or other specialized knowledge. In courts-martial, Military Rule of Evidence 702 tracks the federal rule, the Joint Service Committee’s 2025 compilation reflects the 2023 amendment as part of the military rule through Military Rule of Evidence 1102 (Joint Service Committee on Military Justice, 2025), practitioners should confirm current text, and military judges apply the factors of United States v. Houser (1993).
Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12.1, on the government’s written request the defendant must disclose within 14 days where the defendant claims to have been and the alibi witnesses; the government must then disclose its own witnesses, and the court may exclude undisclosed alibi witnesses but not the defendant’s own testimony. Rule 12.1(f) makes evidence of an alibi intention later withdrawn, and related statements, inadmissible against the person who gave notice. The Supreme Court upheld a notice-of-alibi rule in Williams v. Florida (1970) and held in Wardius v. Oregon (1973) that due process forbids enforcing such a rule unless the defendant receives reciprocal discovery. In courts-martial, Rule for Courts-Martial 701(b)(2) requires the defense to notify trial counsel in writing before trial on the merits of its intent to offer an alibi, stating the place or places the accused claims to have been and the witnesses on whom the defense will rely, and R.C.M. 701(a)(3)(B) requires trial counsel to disclose rebuttal witnesses after timely notice. The discussion to R.C.M. 916(a) explains that alibi is not a special (affirmative) defense because it denies that the accused committed the act, so the government’s burden of proving the offense is unchanged.
Arizona
Arizona Rule of Evidence 702 adopted the Daubert standard effective January 1, 2012, and was amended effective January 1, 2024, to track the 2023 federal amendment (Ariz. Sup. Ct. Order R-23-0004). Under State v. Chapple (1983), Arizona’s leading case on memory expert testimony, and State v. Nordstrom (2001), admission is generally discretionary and experts are confined to general factors. Experts may not opine on whether a particular witness is truthful (State v. Lindsey, 1986, 149 Ariz. at 475). Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 15.2(b) requires the defendant to give the State written notice of the defenses the defendant intends to assert at trial, a list that names alibi, together with the supporting witnesses, by the deadline in Rule 15.2(d), which in superior court is generally 40 days after arraignment or 10 days after the State’s initial disclosure, whichever comes first, unless the court orders otherwise. Arizona’s standard instruction on alibi tells jurors that the State must prove the defendant was present at the time and place of the crime and that a reasonable doubt on that point requires acquittal (RAJI (Criminal) Standard 46). Because alibi is not an affirmative defense, refusing a requested alibi instruction supported by the evidence was reversible error in State v. Rodriguez (1998).
Special Issues in Legal Practice
The principles described above apply with equal force to every party in a legal proceeding. The science operates the same way regardless of who is asking the questions, and the research summarized here does not by itself favor either side. What differs between the parties is not the science but the vantage point — the particular places where these issues tend to surface, and the particular errors each party is best positioned to guard against. The two summaries below identify those recurring issues. They are offered for orientation, not as litigation strategy; in every case the controlling question is what the evidence in that case will, and will not, support, and the expert’s role is to inform the trier of fact rather than to advocate for either side.
Special Issues for Prosecutors
The research supports several points prosecutors can legitimately present. Personally significant events are generally remembered better than routine ones, and the gist of a significant experience is often retained for years, so a complainant’s uncertainty about dates, sequence, or peripheral details is an expected feature of autobiographical memory rather than, by itself, a sign of fabrication. An alibi can be fabricated and rehearsed to remain consistent, and documentary evidence of time and place is generally more reliable than memory for either party. Investigators are well positioned to record an accused’s whereabouts account early, using location-based as well as time-based questions, to document what alibi witnesses were told before interview, and to check alibis promptly against records.
The research also counsels caution. Innocent people asked about ordinary days often give alibis that are incomplete, partly wrong, or revised as they find records, and the research does not support treating an alibi’s error or change, by itself, as evidence of guilt; mock-juror studies suggest that factfinders are inclined to do so. Showing an alibi witness incriminating evidence before taking a statement can weaken the witness’s corroboration of a true alibi. Vividness and confidence do not establish the accuracy of a particular detail in any witness’s personal memory, including a prosecution witness’s.
Special Issues for Defense
The research supports several points defense counsel can legitimately present. Innocent people often have little memory of an unremarkable day, rely on what they usually do when asked about a particular time, place events in the wrong week, and revise their accounts as they find records, so a mistaken alibi is not the same as a fabricated one. Alibi witnesses’ corroboration can be weakened by learning of incriminating evidence, children can miss an adult’s departure, and corroborating evidence is often harder for an innocent person to produce than evaluators assume. General expert testimony on these points, with evidence of how the accused was first questioned, can help a factfinder evaluate a changed alibi.
The research also counsels caution. The findings show that alibi errors are common among innocent people, not that a particular alibi’s errors are honest, and a guilty person can also give a mistaken or fabricated alibi. An expert may describe the conditions that make alibi errors likely but may not tell the factfinder that the accused is truthful (Lindsey). Notice obligations under Rule 12.1 (on the government’s request), R.C.M. 701(b)(2), and Ariz. R. Crim. P. 15.2 attach early, and late or changing notice can carry procedural consequences. The research on dating applies to the complainant’s memory as well as the accused’s and supports caution about treating a complainant’s uncertainty about dates as evidence that an event did not occur.
This paper is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. The author is a psychologist, not an attorney; summaries of law are general and must be verified against current authority or with a licensed attorney.
References
Allison, M., Caluri, G., Jordoson, J., & Solan, S. (2025). Judicial instructions on alibis: Impact on mock jury decision-making. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 32(4), 594–615. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2024.2362145
Allison, M., Jung, S., & Culhane, S. E. (2024). The effect of alibi consistency, presence of physical evidence and timing of disclosure on mock juror perceptions. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 31(4), 659–670. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2023.2206869
Burke, T. M., Turtle, J. W., & Olson, E. A. (2007). Alibis in criminal investigations and trials. In M. P. Toglia, J. D. Read, D. F. Ross, & R. C. L. Lindsay (Eds.), The handbook of eyewitness psychology: Vol. 1. Memory for events (pp. 157–174). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Conway, M. A. (2005). Memory and the self. Journal of Memory and Language, 53(4), 594–628. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.08.005
Conway, M. A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107(2), 261–288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.107.2.261
Crozier, W. E., Strange, D., & Loftus, E. F. (2017). Memory errors in alibi generation: How an alibi can turn against us. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 35(1), 6–17. https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2273
Friedman, W. J. (1993). Memory for the time of past events. Psychological Bulletin, 113(1), 44–66. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.113.1.44
Joint Service Committee on Military Justice. (2025). Amendments to the Military Rules of Evidence since 1984 (G. E. Maggs, Ed.; 2025 ed.). https://jsc.defense.gov/Portals/99/MRE%20Amendments%202025.pdf
Leins, D. A., & Charman, S. D. (2016). Schema reliance and innocent alibi generation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 21(1), 111–126. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12035
Nieuwkamp, R., Horselenberg, R., & van Koppen, P. (2023). You don’t know: Knowledge as supportive alibi evidence. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 30(5), 695–712. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2022.2116608
Olson, E. A., & Charman, S. D. (2012). ‘But can you prove it?’ – Examining the quality of innocent suspects’ alibis. Psychology, Crime & Law, 18(5), 453–471. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2010.505567
Olson, E. A., & Wells, G. L. (2004). What makes a good alibi? A proposed taxonomy. Law and Human Behavior, 28(2), 157–176. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LAHU.0000022320.47112.d3
Price, H. L., Evans, A. D., Nevokshonoff, E. A., Kehn, A., & Wlodarczyk, J. (2026). Children as alibi corroborators for adults. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1556(1), Article e70179. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.70179
Rubin, D. C., Wetzler, S. E., & Nebes, R. D. (1986). Autobiographical memory across the lifespan. In D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Autobiographical memory (pp. 202–221). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558313.018
Sauerland, M., Krix, A. C., Georgiadou, K., Humblet, J., Broers, N. J., & Sagana, A. (2023). Camera footage and identification testimony undermine the availability of exculpatory alibi evidence. PLoS ONE, 18(10), Article e0289376. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289376
Skowronski, J. J., Betz, A. L., Thompson, C. P., & Shannon, L. (1991). Social memory in everyday life: Recall of self-events and other-events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(6), 831–843. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.6.831
Strange, D., Dysart, J., & Loftus, E. F. (2014). Why errors in alibis are not necessarily evidence of guilt. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 222(2), 82–89. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000169
Talarico, J. M., & Rubin, D. C. (2003). Confidence, not consistency, characterizes flashbulb memories. Psychological Science, 14(5), 455–461. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.02453
Legal Authorities
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999).
State v. Chapple, 135 Ariz. 281, 660 P.2d 1208 (1983).
State v. Lindsey, 149 Ariz. 472, 720 P.2d 73 (1986).
State v. Nordstrom, 200 Ariz. 229, 25 P.3d 717 (2001).
State v. Rodriguez, 192 Ariz. 58, 961 P.2d 1006 (1998).
United States v. Houser, 36 M.J. 392 (C.M.A. 1993).
Wardius v. Oregon, 412 U.S. 470 (1973).
Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970).
Fed. R. Crim. P. 12.1.
Fed. R. Evid. 702.
Rule for Courts-Martial 701(a)(3), 701(b)(2).
Rule for Courts-Martial 916(a) discussion.
Mil. R. Evid. 702.
Mil. R. Evid. 1102.
Ariz. R. Crim. P. 15.2(b), (d).
Ariz. R. Evid. 702.
Ariz. Sup. Ct. Order R-23-0004 (amending Ariz. R. Evid. 702, effective Jan. 1, 2024).
Revised Arizona Jury Instructions (Criminal), Standard Criminal 46 (Alibi or Non-Presence of the Defendant) (State Bar of Arizona, 2022).
Related topic papers: Episodic Memory · The Telescoping Effect · Flashbulb Memories · Reconstruction and Recall · Confidence and Accuracy · Detecting Deception
Related topics from Arizona Forensic Services: Courts-Martial