On t. W. Memory is a miraculous creation it lets us learn from the past and find paths into the future but its not a perfect storage device where the truth is concerned memories can be like quicksand false memories and distorted memories and exaggerated memories are going to simply put memory isnt really that for storing information. Memory isnt always a private matter often there are contradictory memories of one and the same event then its argued out in court which version of a story is correct. Own saw in the eye witness testimony its importance of court cases. But a battle faulty memory in court can land innocent people behind bars i know how often and how common it is for people to have these kinds of errors in their memory a memory is needed in the witness box your memory will also be tested and tricked during this film how susceptible are our memories to manipulation what does that mean for trials and how can we spot when our recall is just plain wrong. Thank you. One of the twentieth centurys most influential psychologists lives and works on the outskirts of los angeles nobody knows more about the tricks of memory than a lizabeth loftus she was able to prove over the course of many experiments that memories can change as a result of outside influences in fact they can even be completely revised she gave evidence as a witness in countless trials o. J. Simpson Michael Jackson and the war crimes trials following the post name conflict for getting in might be a good thing sometimes that if we can you know not dwell on our sadnesses. Maybe live a more optimistic happier life because we are thinking about things that are bringing us down forgetting can have a benefit but sometimes an every day moment only escapes from its normal in significance and becomes an issue of great interest after the fact it mustnt be lost an eye witnesses memory has one big enemy time. A great december day in scotland in one thousand nine hundred eight a bomb exploded in an aircraft belonging to the American Airline panam the boeing crashed over the scottish town of lockerbie all two hundred fifty nine passengers lost their lives most of them americans falling debris killed another eleven people on the ground this attack was to preoccupy the scottish judicial system for a long time Elizabeth Loftus was called in to assist the first person to contact me about this case was a. Very famous law professor from harvard who wanted my opinion about some eyewitness testimony in the case and when he first gave me materials about the case he actually blacked out the. Specifics only one man was convicted thirteen years after the attack loftus didnt get to speak in court at the time but in two thousand and thirteen she published a scholarly article that asked whether faulty memories put an innocent person in prison. Over and over again one eyewitness tony douchy a shop owner from mortar was questioned in a place like this one. His memory was milked until it delivered the results that was so important for the judicial machinery items of clothing discovered at the scene of the crime had let the investigators to go out cheese shop they had come from the suitcase containing the bomb. The shopkeeper was first interviewed about nine months afterwards but he just gave a description he did not make any identification at that at that relatively early time. She confirmed in this first interrogation that he had sold items of clothing to a libyan man prior to the attack the customer hadnt been picky he bought every item suggested also got he said in his statement first he said the suspect was more than six feet tall he said the suspect was fifty years old ah. He said that not me could remember a number of things this first unadulterated memory doesnt match the man who was later sentenced how is that possible by him with eyewitnesses actually lawing plays a minor role unless theyre somehow involved themselves and they try hard but still make mistakes amanda know feel oh yes not every time we recall a memory it changes slightly its a bit like chinese whispers but youre playing it with yourself you often remember the last time you recalled the memory youll recall is itself a memory of the shop owner was constantly confronted with photographs of suspects years after the crime he finally pointed to the photograph of one man who looked very similar to his customer albeit ten years too young photo number eight depicted omega. He the head of security for Libyan Airlines at the time he said this number eight is similar he said he just said so all are on but it was and thats why at best you could call it a tentative identification by then photographs of on the ground he was already in the press. To have you know often when it was covered a lot in the media so we run the risk of mixing in everything weve read and seen and heard so that there are now countless errors in our memory field thats quite different from your forgetting. And as for gusen during a later lineup the eye witness may only have recognized the person from the photographs his memory linked to this face with his original recollection of the customer in the shop. It doesnt just leave an imprint in the mind and you play it back later but actually that the memory is malleable and it can be changed and altered transformed by new things new information that the witness is exposed to this became known as the misinformation of fact Elizabeth Loftus has proved this effect in countless scientific studies now you will be able to participate in one of these experiments youre going to become an eyewitness. Watch carefully and follow the instructions youre going to see three faces in succession remember these faces we will ask you to identify them later. Very good lets practice identifying this person think about whether you saw this person from the left or from the right. Only one picture is correct the left one or the right one. Again left or right. Now your an eye witness make a final choice do you remember the person on the left or on the right. Left is correct you are very likely to have known that. Once again do you recognize the person on the left or on the right. Youll know that too the correct answer is the right time. What about these two left or right. The correct answer is right but around huff of you will have picked the wrong person this time why. What happen is that during that interval of time between the study and the test im asked with their memory i substituted a different face. Than the one was act that was actually shown it was similar but it was different and a completely novel face and asked them to choose and they picked the similar face but it was the wrong face so later on they stuck with that wrong face many of them. It was a demonstration where with a post of an activity that messes with their memory you can make people. It would be completely inaccurate had tossed him out and unfortunately we still treat witnesses in court as if they had computerized memories as if they were like a video tape that you can take off the shelf and play even three months later on and see the same thing come to us when its on course and. In the year two thousand and nine years after the first i did for cation of the photograph tony couch he was asked in Court Whether he recognized his customer and therefore the alleged perpetrator. He said yes thats the guy by the time hes looking at a lineup and he makes an alive identification he hes more confident and i believe that confidence was expressed at trial and al mcgrath he was convicted this statement twelve years after the alleged encounter in a shop in malta played a crucial role in the guilty verdict im a gripe he was given a life sentence in two thousand and nine he was released on compassionate grounds because he had cancer he died three years later he protested his innocence until his death the crime was horrific two hundred fifty nine people were on the plane they died a level people were on the ground they died but it may be that all my grokking too should be added to that list of victims. Elizabeth loftus says dilemma is that she doesnt provide any evidence for a conviction her research only feeds doubt about the truth of a memory thats why shes often be called the patron saint of criminals. They call me all kinds of names i mean when when youre challenging somebody used to. Arish believes and even their livelihood. Some of them are going to get mad and mad theyre going to fight dirty theyre going to call you names and i guess you know that just goes with the territory. Maxa stella is one of germanys most distinguished her and six psychologists at the center for witness statement psychology in berlin he researches methods to assess the truth of witness statements stella has been called as an Expert Witness in countless sexual abuse trials he works in the public eye. By doing two things have always satisfied me greatly and theres the criminal angle thats always like a crossword puzzle you want to find the right sounds thats intellectually exciting and stimulating when the second thing is that you can help the inquiry on to the correct course in these terrible situations and meaning you can help the right side get justice. For his. In the ninetys his expert testimony during the trials of vollmer created an uproar these trials in the city of holmes concerned large scale child abuse stella found out that the childrens memories of the acts had no real basis in fact the case ended with all twenty five accused being acquitted of these trials were off but they were also very instructive it was throw down on that the topic of suggestion attracted the attention of professionals and Advice Centers and Expert Opinion on the accusations that come about because of the very ten dishes questioning of the children in the Advice Centers over the course of the investigation the children incriminated more and more adults in their environment. And what very few people think about is that this mistake can go so far that you really believe you experienced something in the past that never happened that gonna hit her hard in the ninetys there was an increased push in. People rooms like this one to look for suppressed memories of abuse including among adults the idea was to uncover childhood traumas so patients could be healed. The other clear woman who knows the explanation for recapturing a memory is that there was a traumatic event and the idea is that traumas on the remembered here in out that theyre not stored properly by have no no in fact when theyre just there and fragments but they can be brought together into a coherent whole into a memory through therapy and guns and to a man on to them that working with memories is an important part of trauma therapy psycho therapist. Has been treating traumatized people for decades his work is often about ordering fragments of memory and skipped and quite a spec poem from who gives them theres a Broad Spectrum of approaches to identify fragmented broken film so that we can look at it in detail and take away the feel the path. Placed three cause we can look at these things in a diesel aerated way. Interim or any part. If a memory of abuse appears all of a sudden nothings the same for anyone anymore and that includes the accused but what if its a false memory that the mind has created all on its own the case of door is one example weve changed the details of the case to protect all those involved coming here contacting the family contacted me after the accusations had been made. The father had been accused of abusing his daughter and get typed on as there was talk of five or six incidents which went on until she was five and i saw kingston five the earliest case was before she was two on the changing table of i am detective. The daughter a Public Service employee had previously suffered from burnout and depression and had sought help. How to avatar. I know she went to an alternative practitioner because she apparently didnt want the help of the police dont. Ya copyist this therapy went on and thats when communications slowly got was common cultural long some freshening stopped. Cummins runs false memory germany she has advised around two hundred parents usually fathers who feel falsely accused by their children the childrens memories of abuse almost always come to light during therapy the phenomenon has been observed to around twenty five years starting in the United States therapists often cite Sigmund Freuds theories of suppressed childhood traumas what we then began to see as all these people coming out of this psychotherapy with these newfound memories of years of her riffing abuse for the ninetys you know i know you know you have people were certainly going to therapy but a therapist had different ideas about what caused your problems it wasnt a history of sexual abuse that was the immediate explanation at earlier times maybe it was the refrigerator mother the actual truth of a memory often plays no role in therapy. No not in my therapy sessions i often have the goal of making something bearable whether its true or not is second written into it may be important to patients but it could be that the patient says i dont know if its true or not in her book the best way i can live on is with this kind of memory good but that doesnt necessarily mean all rediscovered memories of sexual abuse are incorrect therapists are convinced that traumatic events can have a big influence on the way our memory works. And addition. Vague memories and the inability to remember the results of the crime but theres a question isnt there any in direct consequence for us and that is used against you in trials when youre an adult in a box and two. Important discovery or reckless suggestion the potentially huge number of underscored cases of abuse has made this question a hotly debated one. And i feel mean im not questioning the phenomenon and general woods just say that these memories come back differently from how theyre described in these cases they tend to come back quickly and completely reader can a lot of i know colleagues who say they can tell if someone was abused or not after having seen them twice is wrong of inhuman i dont know about that in your terms pocked warmest duty all of the symptoms could have come about in a different way in that inch guns on. The trial of dogs father was abandoned the investigators said that some of the memories of abuse that she described in detail dated back to a period in very Early Childhood so early that Brain Research has ruled them out. Unless you are infantile Early Childhood amnesia or infantile an easier one means we say in empirical science not not we dont remember anything before where three or four. Talk but the woman in question maintains her memory is correct the family remains split. The parents are suffering dreadfully theyre getting older and they love their daughter they want things to go back to how they were she was a cheerful girl that cheerfulness is gone she suffered. How can the brain create complex and rich memories the answer is quite positive with associations and imagination in that it has for Memory Research theres a classic test called day r. M. Named after the scientist disk vertigo and mcdermott this test is about lists of words what list. Lets do this test here and now were about to read some words to you remember as many of the most possible. Bed rest awake tired dream a waking night blanket dozing slumbering snoring pillow. Yet we often fill gaps in with what we have experience with things that we didnt experience because we assumed it must have happened like that since. Thats. Now were going to show you a list of words and want you to think about which ones youve just heard. Most of you will remember these five words but if you also remember the word sleep your brain tricked you that word wasnt on the list. Them systematised where the test subjects choose the missed target words its here that. They were never on the list but they just assume they must be the missing end is a listing of. The power of the imagination and the willingness to turn outside information into memories of our own who could be more susceptible to that than children in the autumn of two thousand max tello was asked to comment on the case allowed for a girl who was six at the time her memories didnt change during therapy they had been manipulated in the Family Living room by her own well intentioned parents stella sees this case as a perfect example of how false memories are made. The verse and Regional Court reached a terrible incorrect verdict and the Supreme Court had very strong words to say it worked on is what happened in the case of little louka lauer thats not her real name was living with her cousins who had fled with their mother from their alcoholic father when lauer and her cousins were found playing doctors and nurses lauers father had a terrible suspicion. He had the impression that more must have happened than just playing doctors you hear so much in the media about sexual abuse he decided with the help of the two mothers to systematically question all three of the children. So her. Max taylor was only called to the case later on he was allowed to view the file when according to my great surprise there was a diary in the file the adults had kept going to kill as records of their interrogations lauras father had used the two women as secretaries for every evening he dictated what had been asked and answered and of half of us think im for her. The diaries document in detail the efforts of the children to confirm the parents suspicion. Of the ounces started with a boy who had once seen a man in a playground who had pulled out his penis. The older boy said something about a lesson in school. From the heat and. These interrogations went on for several months then little by little memories of abuse really did appear the focus here was on the father of the two boys who had been left alone after a family quarrel. So it went so far that the children gave very vivid descriptions of abuse all three Children Together or one child was made to abuse another and these three adults took the children out of their money and they put more and more ideas into their heads as these are these children werent lying in the traditional sense and they were just parroting the words they had been given. As in fact they developed false memories because theyve really believed something happened and also at first was ashamed now there isnt an isolated case just like in germany there had been an increase in the number of false memories of child abuse in the United States when society finally woke up to a problem that had long been ignored. All around the country the stake here cases these kids kiddie cases involving kids you know three years old four years old saying these wild things would crop up and people working used everywhere at around the same time german Advice Centers and therapists increasingly started looking for memories of abuse. And here to some children left these meetings with memories that hadnt been there before. To distinguish between false memories and real ones courts use criteria defined by witness statements psychology. Its about the credibility of the truth content of the experience background of a statement is it really a reflection of something that actually happened only to just. How detailed incoherent is the statement how intelligent are the witnesses could they have made up part of a story is the statement the result of a lot of therapy or did it show up like this five years earlier too was the witness question in a neutral open manner these characteristics define the witnesses credibility in court and if i take the time before vomits ninety to ninety five percent of statements were credible then came the observed investigations and the credibility rate went down not because our method had changed but because this nonsense was spread around in public and repeated in many Advice Centers and clinics on a. Clinic in his own home and mark boal. Can really childrens lives are destroyed and the militias are destroyed and all because of well meaning people it really makes me crazy whats wrong door to underfund on every pocket in lauers case the court initially believed the children statements the accused was sentenced to five years in jail it wasnt until the case went to appeal that the force memories were identified inge taylors report and the conviction was quashed. Stella and his colleagues face a lot of opposition because their work can cast doubt on statements made by witnesses but he doesnt see him self a someone who protects criminals. Im responsible in total for around one hundred years of prison time for sexual abuse cases of dimple cases where my records played a role one day and i dont have a bad conscience these accusations are ideologically motivated and people dont want to believe that there could be false statements in this field one doesnt. But theyre not deliberate. Theyre based on false memories of correctness in the home boom of china. The truth gets left behind when false memories unfold in the courtroom but do these memories only ever affect the actions of others. The way perpetrators also remember things wrongly is the subject of research being carried out in london. Judea sure is a rising star in Memory Research. And they wish that when they say research is me search my Autobiographical Memory isnt very good as a result i thought others must have the same problem i wanted to understand both myself and others better at. The london based german canadian is highly sought after. She teaches criminology at Southbank University and advises both the British Police and the german army. For a Current Study of the ways false memories are created she went a big step further than her call. She gave her test subjects memories of crimes they were supposed to have committed themselves. And i did those in a room where i always looked very professionally i had a bookshelf full of books about retrieving childhood memories and thats a long contracts additional and there were lots of open books if you looked around my lab youd think i really was doing what i said i was doing. The sixty test subjects believe this was about them improving their childhood memories the academic look of the rooms how did own suggestive affect. Your the ed sullivan i wrote to the parents of my test subjects and asked about a real emotional event that took place between the ages of eleven and fourteen months. And i asked about the names of the test subjects best friends at that age now to now infamous and file formal politician efforts and yeah i asked where they lived on these attacks have it done but not i used these details and wove them into a false memory in which i suggested to them what they had done in the struggle happens here to see it happen so picture yourself for it. When you were fourteen years old you know she had a physical fight in the Police Culture so i dont like i dont know. Thats why i want to feel like i dont ever. Sure suggested that the parents told her about the servant but that the participants would have to remember on their own. Does it ever tell you. This and the faculty protests i process largely copied the interrogation techniques that Police Officers use when theyre talking to victims or suspects magnetite or what i met up fun automates. And just like i witnesses the participants of the study claimed to remember the deed. I dont like calling it suppression but sometimes you put bad memories to one side think about whether you can remember it and then there is a pause. Then she started her search for the hidden suddenly lost memories the imagination and the memory work closely together fragments of memories and the details sure invented were transformed into a coherent remembered story. That a message interview after the first interview the first time i sat with the test subjects they usually had one or two details but maybe none for light but the seed was planted that this event might have occurred then they came back to the lab and i did this imagination exercise again and slowly i got more details than mere mierda ties i can maybe remember getting it like a verbal fight maybe our first. But we might have had a conversation where i was like no i didnt start it or i feel like she. Pushed me first ok sharing memories is a social activity and are one of the ways that our memory gets distorted ears because we do share and you share it with different audiences it works just the same outside the lab julia shores test subjects continue developing their memories at home either alone or in conversations with others and that has an aspect of you know they came back a week later for a final interview and suddenly the story it was transformed it felt very different hats thats a mess and if it is like a kind of like a fire kind of thing. And well. See myself wearing this. Oh definitely. The cops show up and we were kind of having our. First date and not push. I feel like i was thinking oh i didnt start thinking. Suddenly the test subjects spoke about what her suppose if they happened to me why they gave reasons and described emotions and details more than fifty details on average ties some of these memories more human and. Sure how to seventy percent success rate but implanting false memories of a crime much to her own surprise in a deep briefing she helped to test subjects get rid of their false memories again. If there are so many ways in which false memories can be created how can we even begin to trust our memory in court. Is it possible to measure the difference between real and false memories. The renowned german brain scientist hans markovitch is examining just that he showed his test subjects several short film sequences and asked them to remember them. Done. Clash limited leo after showing the films we put the test subjects into an m. R. I. We showed them various pictures on a screen when there were pictures that had been in the film. The other pictures werent in the film so the involve us on the old around forty five percent made false statements for support in ma and they said the picture had been in the film even though it hadnt with time or the other way around what time are interested and when they were right then this prefrontal cortex was activated active if they were wrong and the area in the visual Association Area in the visual cortex was activated to not be tough to foster and not actually view the data is still inexact but thats more a matter of Technical Development says hans markovitch so minister after three it could become possible in the future to measure brain activity to find out whether someone is remembering correctly or not. To go in not what are your feeling not nevertheless many psychologists have fundamental doubts about whether that could be possible there is some support for the idea that you might be able to show a somewhat different neural signal when somebody is telling the truth versus telling a lie but the problem with the false memory is people believe it so it is their truth and knowledge brings cant thank you. Cant reliably discriminate between a true memory and a false memory so theyre not going to be useful for that purpose not not for a long long time the research into folds memories will continue there are some initial attempts at using the positive aspects. Somewhere along the line i got the idea that while i wonder could we plan a warm fuzzy memory of lets say about a healthy food maybe people would want to eat it more and we did that with asparagus Elizabeth Loftus gave her test subjects a false memory about loving asparagus and this did indeed manifest itself during a dinner hosted by the scientists the manipulated participants were more likely to help themselves to asparagus than the control group now im starting to see that if you can affect peoples nutritional choices maybe make a dad in the obesity problem in our society by planting false memories and make people avoid fattening foods and embrace Healthy Foods maybe theres a waiter to put this mind manipulation to some good use this can even work when the subject is aware of the manipulation creating a false memory in complete awareness that saw final experiment. Im going to convince the view is of something to. Follow judy assures instruction and eat less story ice cream this is the same stand a fight and if you want to give yourself a false memory theres a very simple method you can use if you want to stay away from a food for example you just have to imagine a bad experience with this food stand imagine youre in an ice cream parlor and youre ordering strawberry ice cream you eat it and youre sick if family is worried you feel increasingly sick imagine details of all the senses what is what did you see why were you so sick where were you sitting what did you take sed if you repeat this false multisensory experience youre more likely to stay away from ice cream in the future of. But who wants that whats more the new false memory would have to battle against the many real memories of how enjoyable ice cream is countless repetitions will be necessary. The opportunities to create false memories to produce positive outcomes are still largely unexplored its a field of research for the future not least for julia shaw she doesnt consider force memories a weakness that its credibly important to have false memories its much more fluid social if we can talk to each other and take on details from other people and incorporate them in our own memory these details are often correct even though they didnt originally come from us. Memories arent set in stone although that would make the work of the police and the courts easier our memory is soft and malleable it has gaps and these gaps are filled with imagine events little allow for only became an apparent victim of abuse following the interrogations by whole well meaning parents door and her family are still suffering today the Court Dismissed the charge because of suspected false memories shes still in therapy you feel these healers who took a three week course and now call themselves that are opposed speakers that term is only protected in very limited circumstances there that take your lowly dangerous for. Thats a problem for the Justice System which has to rule on questions of innocence and guilt but even within the judicial system the desire for results has an enormous suggestive power the ability to develop a memory of having committed a crime oneself isnt only possible under look poetry conditions in my profession because of that my research is about false confessions its obvious to me how easy it is to get people to confess to things they didnt do that sometimes just not excepted when you speak with Police Officers or research into false recall has caused many scientists to become advocates of doubt as was the case in the lockerbie trial they are confronted with the real consequences of their insights as experts they remind us of a fundamental tenet of our legal system its better to let ten guilty people go free than to convict one innocent person and and. Thats why we have a system where theres a presumption of innocence doubt about the credibility of memory makes it harder for courts to accept eyewitness evidence but sometimes it makes the legal system more credible and strengthens it those falsely accused need a strong legal system just as much as the victims of crimes do memory is malleable and this is a lesson that these innocent people who spent time in prison learned the hard way because they really learned that that memory like liberty is a fragile thing. Mysterious storyteller. A struggle for survival. Arts twenty one presents sharon side. A symphonic suite by nico live risky korsakov. Thirty minutes on d. W. Your smart t. V. The smarter t. W. Four small. What you want to get up to date extraordinary. Depth you decide whats on sunday morning. Dot com smart. I think theres a real need for journalists that people trust that can make sense of all this and to explain whats actually happening i became a journalist because i wanted to be storyteller and i want to find those real authentic stories about everyday people who have something to share and its not just about being fear or being neutral its about being truthful. I want to show that even though were all different there isnt any general solution condition that makes sense so i want to give the Younger Generation thats not for the express themselves freely be what they want to be. Their closed. Paid for mine. Revelers around the world have been ringing in the new year in london the charms of big ben helped usher in twenty eight. Earlier moscow