Forensic interviews and eyewitness testimony clearly rely on memory. Because in 85% of criminal prosecutions there is no medical nor trace evidence, the burden is on what witnesses report hearing/seeing; thus memory is the evidence! However, cognitive frailties, including forgetting and retrieval failures, combined with misinformation threaten the accuracy and credibility of witnesses’ recollections. Overall, these factors foment illusory memories with serious consequences when forensic events are at issue. This observation tracks with false memory findings in a simple laboratory task, the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Paradigm. Herein participants study word lists each containing thematically-related items converging upon a critical, non-presented, word. Consider Chair as the missing item for this list: table, sit, legs, couch etc. Subsequently, participants remember many presented words and with high frequency “recollect” the critical lure (e.g., Chair) as well. We examined “forensic” DRM materials exemplified by the list containing words related to Guilty, the non-presented word. Control and emotionally tinged, lists provided baselines for correct and incorrect recognition memory. True memory averaged 63%, yet critical item false memory was higher at 67%, a common outcome. Correct memory for forensic lists (62%) was comparable to control (66%) and emotional (57%) lists. All list types produced substantial levels of false memory, with control/emotional at 72% and forensic “only” at 58% revealing that legal material is not immune to the false memory effect. We also report a recall experiment and then discuss forensic implications of DRM experiments, arguments bolstered because our results are grounded on stimuli relevant to criminal justice
