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This paper reviews whether trauma exposure or PTSD is associated with greater susceptibility to false memories and suggestion in controlled laboratory studies, reporting mixed evidence of modest increases for some tasks. It also describes research showing that central features of traumatic events may be well retained and cautions that laboratory results cannot establish whether any individual account of a real event is true or false.
Unconscious transference occurs when a witness mistakes an innocent familiar face for someone seen committing a crime, because recognition is attributed to the wrong source. The paper reviews experimental evidence and proposed explanations, including source confusion and memory blending, and discusses how prior exposure to a bystander, mugshot, or acquaintance can complicate later identification.
Verbal overshadowing is a modest, condition-dependent effect in which describing a face can reduce a witness’s later accuracy in recognizing it. The paper summarizes research on the effect’s size and possible explanations, and considers how the timing and detail of a description before a lineup may affect how an identification should be evaluated.
This plain-language article explains prospective memory, the ability to remember to carry out an intention at a later time, and distinguishes it from memory for past events. It describes event-based and time-based intentions, common reasons intentions are forgotten, and how failures to remember a planned action can matter when testimony concerns a person’s later conduct.
This article describes the reminiscence bump, the disproportionate number of autobiographical memories people report from adolescence and early adulthood, and examines evidence that its onset is associated with puberty. It discusses identity formation, cultural life expectations, and developing memory systems, while cautioning that broad lifespan patterns cannot establish what a particular person remembers.
This article summarizes memory findings associated with schizophrenia, including difficulties encoding details and distinguishing experienced information from imagined or suggested material. It notes that research finds confidence can be poorly calibrated, with mistaken answers sometimes held confidently, while emphasizing that diagnosis alone does not determine an individual witness’s reliability.
This article explains the self-reference effect: people tend to remember information better when they connect it to themselves during learning. It reviews evidence that self-relevance can also increase false recall under suggestion, and discusses why personal involvement may strengthen both accurate memories and memory errors.
This article describes the serial position effect, in which people recall the beginning and end of a sequence better than its middle. It explains how rehearsal and short-term availability contribute to primacy and recency, then considers how position in an event or identification procedure may shape a witness’s recall without establishing that any particular account is false.
Source monitoring is the mental process by which people decide whether a remembered detail was witnessed, imagined, or learned later, and errors can leave accurate content attached to the wrong origin. The paper describes how suggestion, similar sources, fading context, divided attention, and questioning can contribute to such confusion in testimony, while emphasizing that confidence alone cannot establish where a detail came from.
The telescoping effect describes systematic errors in judging when events occurred, with distant events often remembered as more recent and recent events sometimes placed farther back. The paper explains how these shifts can distort event sequences, reported frequency, and ages of onset, and discusses why dating errors may be more pronounced among children and older adults when testimony depends on timing.
