Quirks of Memory

The paper distinguishes recovered memories from claims that traumatic memories were repressed and later restored, and reviews the scientific dispute around those claims. It discusses alternative explanations for periods without disclosure, how suggestive techniques can contribute to false memories, and the evidence and cautions relevant to evaluating recovered-memory testimony.

Remembering is a reconstructive process that can strengthen, suppress, or alter the information a person later reports. The paper reviews the testing effect and retrieval-induced changes, explaining that repeated recall can preserve some details while making competing details harder to access or reshaping recollection, with implications for witness interviews and testimony.

Rosy retrospection is the tendency for people to evaluate past events more positively in hindsight than they rated them while the events were happening. The paper describes studies comparing anticipated, real-time, and later evaluations, and discusses fading affect bias—the faster fading of negative feelings—as a proposed explanation for this shift in emotional assessment.

Schemas are knowledge frameworks and scripts are expectations about the usual sequence of events; both help people interpret experience but can also shape what they remember. The paper reviews research showing that schemas guide attention and fill gaps during recall, sometimes leading people to omit atypical details or confidently remember expected details that were absent.

The self-generation effect is the finding that information people produce themselves can be remembered better than information they simply read, although the advantage varies with the task. The paper summarizes studies connecting the effect to the mental operations used during learning and notes that generated information may improve memory for an item while leaving memory for its source or context unchanged or impaired.

This handbook chapter reviews how intellectual disability, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, dissociation, trauma, alcohol, and marijuana may affect eyewitness memory and reporting. It describes research on completeness, accuracy, suggestibility, encoding, and retrieval, noting that effects vary by condition, questioning method, delay, and substance exposure.

The illusion-of-truth effect occurs when repetition makes a statement feel more believable, even without new evidence or conscious memory of hearing it before. The paper explains how familiarity and processing fluency contribute to the effect, reviews research suggesting that repetition of a correction can also reinforce a false claim, and considers implications for testimony, publicity, and courtroom instructions.

The isolation effect, also called the Von Restorff effect, describes how an item that contrasts with its surroundings is often remembered better than similar items. The paper reviews explanations based on distinctiveness and attention, the possible cost to memory for surrounding details, and weapon focus research on how a weapon can draw attention away from a perpetrator’s face.

The peak-end rule describes how retrospective evaluations of an experience are shaped especially by its most intense moment and its ending, while duration neglect refers to the limited role an event’s total length may play in that evaluation. The paper considers these findings in relation to testimony and explains that retrospective ratings do not establish that a person’s memory for specific event details is inaccurate.

The reminiscence bump is the disproportionate availability of autobiographical memories from adolescence and early adulthood, often around ages ten to thirty. The paper reviews evidence across memory tasks and cultures, outlines competing explanations involving novelty, cognitive ability, identity, and cultural life scripts, and discusses what the pattern can and cannot establish about testimony.

The self-serving bias describes how people tend to credit their own abilities for successes while explaining failures through circumstances or other people, often sincerely rather than deceptively. The paper reviews research on the bias and its limits, then explains how it can shape involved witnesses’ attributions of responsibility while applying equally to all parties.

The subadditivity effect occurs when people judge a broad possibility as less likely than the probabilities they assign to its specific parts, so unpacking a possibility can change perceived likelihood without changing the facts. The paper explains research on this judgment pattern, its limits, and how concrete alternatives may affect courtroom probability assessments while remaining dependent on evidentiary support.

The testing effect is the finding that retrieving information from memory can strengthen later recall more than studying the same material again. The paper reviews evidence and explanations for retrieval practice, then applies the principle to witness interviews, explaining that early open-ended recall may preserve accurate details while suggestive retrieval can reinforce errors.

The Zeigarnik effect describes the reported tendency to remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed ones, first explored by psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik after observing a waiter’s recall of unpaid orders. The source notes that replication findings have been mixed and suggests that the effect may depend especially on how important the interrupted task is to the person.