Conway Martin A
a Department of Psychology , City University London , UK.
Memory. 2013 Jul;21(5):566-575. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2013.794241. Epub 2013 May 7.
I describe three legal cases in which I acted as a memory expert witness. The cases contain remarkable accounts of memories. Such memories are by no means unusual in legal cases, are often over retention intervals measured in decades, and contain details the specificity of which is highly unusual. For example, recalling from childhood verbatim conversations, clothes worn by self and others, the weather, actions that at the time could not have been understood, details that could not have been known, precise durations and calendar dates, and much more. I show how our scientific understanding of memory can help courts reach more informed decisions about such fantastical "memories" and how these memories constitute data that as researchers we should seek to understand.
我描述了三个我作为记忆专家证人参与的法律案件。这些案件包含了关于记忆的非凡描述。此类记忆在法律案件中绝非罕见，其保留间隔往往长达数十年，且包含细节，这些细节的特异性非常罕见。例如，能逐字回忆起童年时的对话、自己和他人当时所穿的衣服、天气、当时无法理解的行为、不可能知道的细节、精确的持续时间和日历日期等等。我展示了我们对记忆的科学理解如何能够帮助法庭就此类奇异的“记忆”做出更明智的决定，以及这些记忆如何构成了作为研究人员我们应该努力去理解的数据。
