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A categorized guide to the foundations, biology, identification procedures and courtroom applications of memory. Use the guide below, or browse the individual papers by title.
Topics of Memory guide
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Mug Books and Mugshot Exposure
Mug books are large collections of arrest photographs used to generate a suspect when police do not yet have one, and prior exposure can affect a later lineup identification. The paper distinguishes commitment to an earlier choice from familiarity, reviews evidence that overlap with an innocent face creates the main risk, and describes procedural safeguards and legal considerations.
Observation Evidence
This overview explains the distinction drawn in Clark v. Arizona between observation evidence about a defendant’s conduct and thinking, and clinical testimony about mental disease or capacity. It describes the Court’s rationale and the criticism that separating these categories can remove context needed to understand behavior, then discusses how evidence tied to a specific mental-state element may be evaluated under ordinary evidentiary rules.
Reconstruction and Recall
Memory is an active reconstruction rather than a recording, so recall can combine fragments of an event with a person’s later knowledge, expectations, and beliefs. The paper explains how this process can produce both changed and smoothly consistent accounts, and discusses why courts should examine the history and sources of a witness’s recollections when evaluating testimony.
Show-Ups
A show-up presents one person to a witness for identification, often near the scene shortly after a crime, while a lineup presents several people. The paper reviews research indicating that show-ups can produce similar correct-identification rates when the culprit is present, while mistaken identifications of an innocent person become a concern when the culprit is absent.
Stages of Memory
Memory involves encoding information, storing it, and retrieving it later. The article outlines these three stages, describes distinctions between short- and long-term memory, and reviews limits of laboratory memory research, including questions about whether findings from artificial tasks generalize to everyday situations.
Suggestibility of Children’s Memory
Children can provide accurate testimony, but the way adults question them can shape what they remember and report. The paper reviews research on leading or repeated questions, stereotypes, and accusatory interviewing, and describes open-ended, non-leading, well-documented protocols as a means of reducing the risk of suggestion-related errors.
The Hippocampus
The hippocampus plays a central role in forming and stabilizing lasting memories, and damage or disruption can produce different forms of amnesia. The article describes the distinction between anterograde and retrograde memory loss, discusses intoxication and crime-related amnesia, and considers what brain science can and cannot establish in legal cases.
Working Memory
Working memory is a limited, short-lived mental workspace that holds information in awareness while a person uses it, and it supports the initial encoding of an event. The paper connects this capacity limit to eyewitness accounts, explaining why a witness may not take in every detail during a fast event and why immediate confidence or recall does not by itself establish durable accuracy.