If there is a safe and effective way to induce short term amnesia, wouldn’t that be useful for police lineups?
People are good at picking the person who most resembles who they saw, but not at determining if someone was who they saw. Amnesia would allow people to pick among different lineups without remembering who they chose in the first lineup and whether or not that is someone in a later lineup.
People would be given a drug or machine interfering with their memory and pick someone out of a lineup of a suspect and similar looking people. Then, the person they identified as who they saw would be removed and they would be asked to pick again. One could also have a new lineup with the person chosen from the first one and new extras, but I think the greatest benefit would be if the selected person is removed. This would allow one to see if the witness actually recognizes the person or chose the best fit in the first lineup and is subsequently remembering that person as the culprit.
If there is a safe and effective way to induce short term amnesia, wouldn’t that be useful for police lineups?
People are good at picking the person who most resembles who they saw, but not at determining if someone was who they saw. Amnesia would allow people to pick among different lineups without remembering who they chose in the first lineup and whether or not that is someone in a later lineup.
People would be given a drug or machine interfering with their memory and pick someone out of a lineup of a suspect and similar looking people. Then, the person they identified as who they saw would be removed and they would be asked to pick again. One could also have a new lineup with the person chosen from the first one and new extras, but I think the greatest benefit would be if the selected person is removed. This would allow one to see if the witness actually recognizes the person or chose the best fit in the first lineup and is subsequently remembering that person as the culprit.