Memory in the Courtroom

External factors that can distort memory encoding and recall.

How emotions and trauma impact memory encoding and recall.

Recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g., remembering one’s exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was.

A form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory.

The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own.

Cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa).

The commonly held idea that we are more consistent in our attitudes, opinions, and beliefs than we actually are.

The tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses.