OVERVIEW OF THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PARADIGMS AND THEIR FOCUS

• Jurisdiction: Australia

Eyewitness memory research ....................................................................... [65.200]

The laboratory procedure for examining eyewitness testimony ................... [65.210]

The relevance and usefulness of laboratory studies to the courtroom setting................... ...................[65.220]

[65.200] Eyewitness memory research

The scientific literature offers a long and rich history of research on human memory. Eyewitness memory in particular is one of the oldest fields of inquiry in the psychological sciences, with some of the first experiments dating back to before 1885. The modern era of research examining eyewitness memory distortions dates back to the 1970s, with the central paradigms remaining relatively similar during this time. In an excellent review, Sporer (2006) reported that in the early 20th century, memory scientists who turned their attention to legal problems such as eyewitness memory gave evidence in trials and were successful in some law reforms. Despite their early successes, however, achievements stalled - a major factor being that some of the core scientists were both Jewish and in Germany. In the 1970s, a new generation of scientists rediscovered the earlier research, and - armed with their more sophisticated techniques - ushered in the modern era of scientific research on eyewitness memory.

A key focus of eyewitness memory research during the past few decades has been suggestibility. Suggestibility refers to the degree to which a person's encoding, retention and retrieval of events can be influenced by a range of social and psychological factors (Ceci and Bruck (1993)). The effect of misleading postevent suggestions (as a source of potential memory distortion) has dominated the literature, although memory contamination has been shown to arise from a wide range of conditions operating at the time of, and even prior to, the event.

The majority of eyewitness testimony research...