Verbal Testimony Research Articles

Scientific study of witness memory: Implications for public and legal policy.

The legal system relies heavily on human memory. Crime investigations, criminal trials, and many civil trials depend on memory to reconstruct critical events from the past. Getting at the truth is often synonymous with establishing the who, what, when, and how of some prior episode. Past events tend to leave traces, and the process of reconstructin g events from the past is aided by various types of trace evidence. These traces can be physical, such as a footprint, a blood stain, or a fingerprint. An event can also leave traces of a somewhat different type, namely memory traces. Although these traces can also be said to have a physical property, in the sense that there exists a biological residue for the event somewhere in the brain, they cannot be observed directly by crime investigators or triers of fact. Instead, the memory trace that resides within the human brain is manifested for investigators and triers of fact through verbal testimony. It is probably safe to conclude that courts of law could not function without relying on human memory. Even physical evidence, such as a bloody glove, requires someone to take the witness stand and recall where it was found, by whom, at what time, in what condition, and so on. The scientific study of human memory was initiated over 100 years ago by Hermann Ebbinghouse (1885/1913), and the scientific study of human memory today remains almost exclusively the province of psychology and related cognitive and neurological sciences. The scientific study of memory is so fundamental to psychology that no general textbook in psychology could fail to devote a chapter or its equivalent to memory. Over the last 20 years or so, psychologists have developed a specific research literature on witness testimony. This research has been directed primarily at eyewitnesses, such as victims or bystanders to a criminal event. This issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law is devoted to the potential contributions of the scientific study of witness testimony to public policy and legal issues. Making policy or procedure recommendations to the criminal justice system on eyewitness reliability issues is not new for psychologists. 90 years ago, Hugo Munsterberg (1908) argued that Nearly every chapter and sub-chapter of sense psychology may help to clear up the chaos and confusion which prevail in the observation of witnesses (p. 33), and he bemoaned the fact that juries and judges are not obliged to know and understand these things. Following a long period of near dormancy on the issue, research programs in psychology arose again in the mid-1970s, and there has been a renewal of the argument that scientific psychology has something important to offer the legal system. Unlike Munsterberg, who tried to rely almost exclusively on basic findings and theories of sensation and perception, modern researchers on eyewitness issues have made heavy use of complex stimulus

A Biologist in Wonderland: The Texas Biology Textbook Adoption Hearings

During 1984 presidential campaign, a colleague at a prestigious eastern university told me that Ronald Reagan had virtually no chance of reelection because the whole country sees through his shallow, media-controlled approach to government. My response, after a brief moment of speechlessness, was, You've to get out more; you've been talking primarily to your academic colleagues and to other people who think way you do. My job takes me regularly to cities and towns across America, and in 13 years of such travel Ihave learned not to assume that perspective shared by biology educators is necessarily prevailing viewpoint for rest of country. That lesson was brought home to me once again when I attended biology textbook adoption hearings in Austin, Texas, in July 1990. The Texas biology adoption process is important-and bizarre. It is important because Texas, as one of most populous of 22 adoption states, has an inordinate impact on textbook market; publishers pay attention to what happens there and often structure their books to ensure adoption. Because it is not financially feasible to develop alternate textbooks for less lucrative markets, rest of states in effect have their curriculum influenced by decisions in Texas (Moyer 1985). The process also is bizarre, however, because Texas has more than its share of creationists, some of whom, such as Mel and Norma Gabler, have been calling cadence on a march toward ignorance for three decades. Creationist opposition to evolution content in biology textbooks is well organized, and creationists' zeal and antediluvian pronouncements at adoption hearings bring out media in force. Only Texas residents and publishers' representatives are permitted to testify at hearings; I testified in my capacity as director of Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. Two of our books, Blue Version (D.C. Heath) and Green Version (Kendall/Hunt), were among nine books competing for eight possible places on adoption list. All nine books were subject to creationist attacks because books fail to present alternative explanations for life on Earth. The creationists, of course, think that creation science-a wonderful oxymoron-is an acceptable scientific alternative. Their testimony is a monument to scientific illiteracy and reminds us once again that our perspective as science educators is not as universal as we might wish. I provide below a few excerpts from testimony of some 20 creationists; about 35 Texas residents testified in total. The verbal testimony came too fast to ensure verbatim accuracy of statements, but I assure you that speakers' essential points are preserved.

On The Reduction and Unfolding of Sign Systems (The Problem of "Freudianism and Semiotic Culturology")

The Freudian psychoanalytical model is constructed as a chain at one end of which are subconscious libidinal notions and at the other the verbal testimony of the patient. Between these extreme points lies a sequence of symbolic equivalents, transformations, and sign substitutes. Both criticism and isolation of the most interesting aspects of this model from the standpoint of semiotic theory have frequently been undertaken. (1) Without touching on the entire complex of varied problems that arise in connection with the discussion of this theme, we will attempt to shed light on but a single aspect: to what degree the complex of initial sexual motifs underlying the entire construct is in fact primary, reaching into the depths of child psycho-physiology, and to what degree it arises as a secondary fact — the result of translation of complex texts, received by the child from the world of adults, into the considerably simpler language of specifically child ideas.

On the Nature of Mao Tse-tung's ‘Deviation’ in 1927

The second half of 1927 is one of the most obscure periods in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. From a large and well-organised force openly playing a major role in the political and military affairs of the country, the Chinese Communist Party rapidly found itself reduced to a few small remnants fighting for their existence. As a result, the printed sources available for future historians were drastically reduced. The Communists cut their output of publications both for lack of the means to produce them, and because it was no longer prudent to reveal even as much about their plans as they had done before. The Nationalist authorities further decimated this scanty output by confiscation and repression. So much of what has been written about this period is based on verbal testimony or secondary sources, and cannot be regarded as altogether reliable.