MEMORY RESEARCH:RESEARCH ASSESSING people's memories of the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London strongly demonstrates the fallibility of human memory. Such work can have serious implications in areas such as solving crimes, assessing claims of child abuse and eyewitness testimony in courts.
Memories "are not like a video tape you can rewind and replay for perfect recall," said Dr James Ost from Portsmouth University at the Festival of Science in Liverpool. Errors can occur in recall, which in many cases lead to minor social embarrassment but can also have major repercussions.
Dr Ost's research centred on the fact that in the 2005 terrorist attacks, a number 30 bus was bombed in Tavistock Square, but no CCTV footage existed of the event. Despite this, of 300 people questioned, 40 per cent claimed to have seen such footage, with some respondents describing in graphic detail what they had "seen".
His findings add to a body of research showing that memory is "reconstructive" in nature, rather than an exact copy of what happened. Our recall was usually our "best guess" of what happened and studies have shown this guess is relatively accurate, he said.
However, for reasons not well understood, this reconstruction can introduce elements that were not part of the original event. Pioneering work by Elizabeth Loftus in the US in the 1970s showed that even the wording used by a lawyer in court can "plant" false information into someone's memory.
Dr Ost stated there have been a number of cases of "DNA exonerations" where individuals convicted of crimes that relied heavily on damning eyewitness testimony were later found to be innocent by using robust DNA evidence. A 1996 report by the US department of justice found 28 such cases but it was felt that these could just be the tip of the iceberg.
The implications of such work was that "memory alone is not reliable enough to form the basis of legal actions," says Dr Ost.
The British Psychological Society published a report this year, Guidelines on Memory and the Law, reflecting serious professional concern.
Dr Ost found the individuals who created false memories in his study were more "fantasy prone" than those who did not.