Eye Saw It: The Psychology of Eye-Witness Memory – Mon 28 Feb @ 7pm

We use our memories every day, and can usually rely on them. However, psychological research has proven that our memories can be fallible. For example, we forget things, and our memories can be influenced by seemingly mundane things such as discussing our memories with other people. In everyday life, it normally doesn’t matter if we forget something or misremember something. This is not the case for eyewitnesses to crimes though. Here the police need thorough, accurate and reliable witness statements about what was seen.

To what extent can witnesses provide reliable evidence? And what role does psychology have in improving police procedures to enhance eyewitness reliability? When it comes to recognising faces, there is considerable debate about whether the difficulties arise from our ability to encode facial features in the first place, or whether we can retrieve them accurately from memory. This has led to great progress in the creation of –‘e-Fits’: photorealistic images of suspects, based on the information given by witnesses during interviews. Join us for this talk by Derek Carson which will cover some of the key issues that Psychological Science can shed light on in the Psychology of eye-witness memory. This FREE talk will be taking place at the award winning Chambers Coffee House and Restaurant will be open before the talk for snacks and drinks, see their website for more information.

This talk is part of our brand new fourth season of Cafe Science Dundee! You can view the whole programme of Cafe Science and Cafe Science Extra talks here.

We have a range of topics and excellent speakers lined up for this season, we hope to see you at a Cafe Science soon!