Reader\'s Digest Australia & New Zealand - June 2018

90 | June• 2018

FALSE MEMORIES

DNAtesting,saysfalsememoryplays

aroleinmorethan70percentofthe

wrongful convictions they overturn.

Intenpercentofthosecases,their

clients originally pleaded guilty,

serving an average of 14 years for

crimes that they didn’t commit.

DrJuliaShawisacriminalpsy-

chologist at London Southbank Uni-

versity and the author of popular

psycholog y bookTheMemoryIllu-

sion.Sheconductsresearchintohow

andwhyourbrainsformthesecom-

plex false memories. It’s a phenom-

enon,sheexplains,that’sfarmore

common than we might imagine.

“Weliketothinkwe’reableto

distinguish between imagination

and experiences, but

the brain can’t actu-

ally do this very well.

Certainly not once

you’ve pictured what

afantasymightfeel,

smellortastelike.

Then you’re adding in

the markers we usu-

allyusetoseparate

fact and fiction, and

you’re making them

indistinguishable.”

Ourbrainsarehometoapprox-

imately86billionneurons.Eachis

equipped with stringy arms called

dendrites, allowing them to stretch

out to other cells. Each dendrite has

‘spines’,whichactlikefingers,ena-

blingthemtoreachoutacrosssyn-

apses and communicate from one

False memory

plays a role in

70 per cent of

the Innocence

Project’s

overturned

convictions

JustadayafterBarbara’sbodywas
found, the murder was an open and
shutcase.Basedonhisconfession,a
jurysentencedPetertobetweensix
and16yearsinprison.heonlyprob-
lem? He was innocent.
Theteenager’smemoryofhis
mother’s murder was entirely false.
In1975,twoyearsafterhisconvic-
tion,Peterwassetfree,exonerated
by evidence that proved he couldn’t
have been at the scene of the crime.
Byclaimingthathe’dfailedalie-
detectortestandthatmentalillness
hadlikelycausedhimto‘blackout’the
crime, the interrogators convinced
Peter–byallaccountsaquiet,
good-natured boy who loved his
motherdearly–that
he must have been the
killer.
NotonlydidPeterbe-
lieve his interrogators,
he eventually provided
detailed memories of
the attack, explain-
ingbothhismotive
(his mother was an
alcoholic who rarely
showed him afection)
andplanfordisposing
of the weapon (tossing it behind a
nearby service station).
So why did this young man from a
sleepy town in Connecticut confess
toacrimehenevercommitted?
he Innocence Project movement
in the US, which seeks to exonerate
innocent prisoners through modern