Study On Factors Affecting The Phenomenon Of False Memory In Judicial Inquiry

Event-based false memory is that people will mistakenly remember the events did not happen, or their memories are different from the reality. One typical example is eyewitnesses' memory of the case. The factors that affect the witnesses' false memory mainly include two aspects:the intra-individual factors such as age, gender, cognitive styles, etc.; the extra-individual factors, such as inquisitor, situation of inquiry, time interval and so on.This study focuses on five factors that may effect eyewitnesses'memory in the process of judicial inquiry, they are inquisitor's gender, repeatability of inquiry, warning, time interval and situation of inquiry. The judicial inquiry is an indispensable session of judicial procedure, in this session, a number of factors will inevitably influence a witness, including influencing his false memory. At present, the domestic studys rarely involve the factors that influence eyewitnesses' false memory, but for circumventing the negative impact of the judicial inquiry, it's of great significance to examine affecting factors.In the research field of eyewitnesses'false memory, the classic paradigm is misleading information interference paradigm. The general procedure is as follows: Let the subjects watch a video or a slide about an event, and then provide other descriptions or problems about the event, including misleading information. In a period of time intervals, participants are asked to answer some problems based on their memories. Finally the accuracy and confidence level of their answers are analyzed. This study draws a rookie of misleading information interference paradigm-suggestive inquiry paradigm, studys on adult subjects through three experiments, synthetically surveys the above five factors. Experiment 1 examined the impacts of repeatability of inquiry and inquisitor's gender on false memory. Experiment 2 examined the role of warning and time interval during the repeative inquiry. Experiment 3 examined the effect of different situations and warning on false memory.Based on the above three experiments, the major findings are as follows: (1) Subjects asked by male inquisitors and subjects asked by female inquisitors were tested no difference in their false memories. Under the condition of each question continuously and repeatively inquired, there are not more false memories than under the condition of each question asked once. But the condition of a complete duplication of inquiry produced more false memories than the condition of each question asked once.(2) Under the condition without warning there are less false memories than under the condition of warning. The longer the time interval is, the more false memories occurred. In addition, the effect of warning is relative to the number of warning, the location of warning and time interval.(3) Two kinds of inquiry situations-individual inquiry and simulate court hearing produced different impacts on false memory, and the most false memories were produced when the two kinds of situations overlapped. Warning played different roles in two situations.To improve the effectiveness of the testimony of witnesses, it's helpful to strengthen training and guidance on judiciary inquirers, and to make them use appropriate psychological principles to promote the quality of the judicial inquiry. If the inquiry process becomes more standardized, it will be effective in reducing false memories caused by extra-individual factors.Thus, according to the present findings, we put forward several proposals on the judicial inquiry as follows:(1) In practice of judicial inquiry, without prejudice to judicial proceedings, minimizing the times of repetive inquiry is an effective way to reduce the chance of a witness's giving false information. If you can not avoid repeative inquiry, you should choose reasonable inquiry strategies. If you want to identify the key issues, it's better to conduct real-time inquiry for each issue, not to conduct an overall duplication of inquiry.(2) A controllable means of reducing witnesses's false memory in judicial inquiry is warning. But appropriate warning strategies should be used combining with the time interval between the repeated inquries, the time interval between inquiry and the event, and the situations. To reducing false memories, it's not the most effective to use warnings before all the inquiries.(3) The time interval between judicial inquiry and case is important for the accuracy of the testimony of witnesses. This is not only because of the time interval itself will affect false memory, but also because it can affect the strategies of other controllable factors to take effect. Therefore the sooner the examination of a witness is, the more likely to reduce the impact on witnesses'false memory by judicial inquiry process.(4) The trial make it easier for witnesses to accept wrong information, so the inquirer's performance is particularly important in trial. Not only the speech information can influence witnesses in this study, but the inquirer's non-verbal information that future research should focus on, may also be a lot of interference to witnesses. This indeed is a double-edged sword, both can be available for reference for standardizing how to ask questions in trial, and may be used by some interrogators to get the desired answers.