Brain Quirk Muddies Crime Witness Waters

Eyewitness accounts of crimes could be more untrustworthy than we thought.  Describing an event straight after it occurs makes witnesses more susceptible to providing false information in subsequent retellings, a new study finds. "In a real-life situation, if you're an eyewitness, the first thing you're going to do after you witness an event is call 911," says Jason Chan, a psychologist at Iowa State University in Ames, who led the new study.  This initial recollection could prime a witness' brain to accept a mistaken account, he says, be it from television, lawyers, the police, or another witness.  Rather than crimes, Chan's team tested the memories of 36 university students and 60 retirees who watched an episode of the television drama 24. Immediately after seeing the episode - in which terrorists hijack a jet - half of the subjects took a quiz on what they had just seen.  About 30 minutes later, everyone listened to a short description of the episode, which included details that were either lies or truths. For instance: "The terrorist knocks the flight attendant unconscious with a hypodermic needle" (true); or "The terrorist knocks the flight attendant unconscious with a chloroform rag" (false).    Next, everyone took the same recall test, earlier administered to just half the participants. "What we found was completely surprising," Chan says.  Students and retirees who earlier recalled the TV episode got fewer questions right and more wrong - subjects could leave questions unanswered - than people who hadn't been previously quizzed.  "If you recall the event earlier, you increase susceptibility to misinformation," Chan says.

I, Ol Pooch Hound, believe in the general fairness of our judicial system.  I also believe in the fallibility of the human race, despite their best efforts.  (Canines score much higher on recall and reliability tests.)  Check out how many long sentence prisoners in the Dallas / Fort Worth area have been proven innocent because of DNA evidence and you will wish you belonged to a more hairy species!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16209-brain-quirk-makes-eyewitnesses-less-reliable.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=life

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