Jurors are persuaded by detailed witness memory reports, but do they recognise when detail might be implausible? We asked 599 people to read high- or low-detail memory reports of either recent or historical events. Overall, people rated recent memories as more reliable than historical ones. Highly-detailed memory reports were rated as similarly reliable to low-detail ones, except when the event was traumatic—low-detail traumatic memories were rated as less reliable than similarly-detailed positive or neutral memories. These findings suggest potential jurors have different—and possibly unrealistic—expectations of memories for traumatic events, relative to other events.

For decades, scientists have debated whether it is possible to forget traumatic events like sexual abuse completely. While some clinicians attribute such memory gaps to repression or dissociation, cognitive researchers suggest simpler mechanisms, such as encoding failures or normal forgetting. Using an Italian sample, this study examines the prevalence of forgotten traumatic experiences, their distinct characteristics as compared with other negative memories, and their relevance to recalling historical events after long delays. By exploring the nature and frequency of traumatic memory loss, this work aims to clarify how such forgetting impacts historical narratives and legal decisions.

McNally (2005) called the 1990s repressed memory movement “the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era.” Renewed belief in repressed memory has emerged. We conducted a nationally representative survey (N = 1,581), revealing 93% of U.S. adults believe that traumatic memories can be unconsciously repressed for many years and then recovered. Women and those with lower education expressed greater belief in repressed memories than men and those with higher educational attainment. These findings highlight the need for educational efforts to address misconceptions about repressed memories in the social media age.

The aim of this scoping review was to amass the literature on retractors. We identified 17 articles on the topic of retractors ranging from empirical studies to critical commentaries. A central theme was the influence of therapy in the recovery of potentially false memories. That is, retractors noted that therapists frequently believed that they harboured unconscious repressed memories of abuse which had to be recovered during therapy. Also, retraction took longer that the initial recovery of memories of abuse. Finally, retractors’ memories sometimes qualified as nonbelieved memories. This review provides further insight in how traumatic events can sometimes be misremembered.