Eyewitness confidence and latency: Indices of memory processes not just markers of accuracy

Abstract

AbstractDespite the well‐documented fallibility of eyewitness memories, they influence a variety of judgments and decisions by police, lawyers and the courts. Accordingly, psychologists have tried to identify variables that may help ‘corroborate’ the accuracy of witnesses' testimony. Variables considered by memory researchers to be reliable markers of memory (e.g. confidence and decision latency) have been examined, occasionally endorsed, but more commonly rejected as useful indices of the integrity of witnesses' memories. We examine the history of these attempts to isolate reliable eyewitness memory markers, and why it is that researchers interested in exactly the same issues have reached quite different conclusions about the utility of these memorial markers. We argue that, perhaps in their continuing attempts to find decisive practical solutions, researchers and legal practitioners may have focused too much on techniques or solutions that suggest unreasonable expectations of human memory systems, and too little on refining, and then exploiting, the faithful markers of memory. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.