School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NP, UK.
Biol Psychol. 2013 Sep;94(1):1-11. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.04.012. Epub 2013 May 7.
Brain-activity markers of guilty knowledge have been promoted as accurate and reliable measures for establishing criminal culpability. Tests based on these markers interpret the presence or absence of memory-related neural activity as diagnostic of whether or not incriminating information is stored in a suspect's brain. This conclusion critically relies on the untested assumption that reminders of a crime uncontrollably elicit memory-related brain activity. However, recent research indicates that, in some circumstances, humans can control whether they remember a previous experience by intentionally suppressing retrieval. We examined whether people could use retrieval suppression to conceal neural evidence of incriminating memories as indexed by Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). When people were motivated to suppress crime retrieval, their memory-related ERP effects were significantly decreased, allowing guilty individuals to evade detection. Our findings indicate that brain measures of guilty knowledge may be under criminals' intentional control and place limits on their use in legal settings.
大脑活动有罪知识的标志物已被推广为准确和可靠的措施，以确定犯罪责任。基于这些标志物的测试将记忆相关的神经活动的存在或不存在解释为是否有犯罪信息存储在嫌疑人的大脑中。这个结论严重依赖于未经测试的假设，即犯罪提醒会不由自主地引起记忆相关的大脑活动。然而，最近的研究表明，在某些情况下，人类可以通过有意抑制检索来控制他们是否记得以前的经历。我们研究了人们是否可以使用检索抑制来隐藏事件相关电位（ERPs）索引的犯罪记忆的神经证据。当人们有动机抑制犯罪检索时，他们的记忆相关 ERP 效应显著降低，使有罪的人能够逃避检测。我们的发现表明，犯罪知识的大脑测量可能受到罪犯的有意控制，并限制了它们在法律环境中的使用。
