I'm Dr Graham Pike from the
Department of Psychology at the OU
and I'm a forensic psychologist.
Forensic psychology is concerned with
all aspects of crime
in a criminal investigative procedure.
One thing forensic psychologists
have done is look at witness memory,
particularly how we can help the police
to get the most
out of what a witness
has seen of a crime.
So there are interviewing techniques
based on psychological theories
of memory
that tell police how to go about
interviewing a witness.
One thing that might happen
is that we allow a witness
simply to recall everything they can
without interrupting them.
Something else we might do
is try to mentally reinstate
the crime scene to the witness,
that is to get them to imagine
as if they're back at the crime scene,
to think about the weather,
the temperature and the smells there.
By doing that the witness can remember
more accurate information.
One of the reasons it's so important
to look at witness memory
is there's an expectation that
our brains act a bit like a computer.
So the information goes in,
is stored perfectly
and can just be retrieved perfectly.
However that's not true.
Witnesses quite commonly will forget
certain pieces of information,
not be able to remember details
and will change their mind
about what happened and when,
but that should be expected.
So psychology's important because
it can tell the courts and the police
what would make a good witness
and what to expect
and not to overestimate
exactly what to expect from a witness.
