After an incident, investigators lean heavily on witness accounts to establish what happened. But human memory doesn’t work like a perfect video recording, and that has real consequences for how incidents are investigated and defended.
Stress, trauma, hindsight bias, time delay, and even the way questions are phrased can all shape what witnesses remember and report.
Accounts can drift towards work as imagined rather than work as done, risks can look more obvious after the fact than they were at the time, and by the time an investigation reaches HSE scrutiny or litigation, the evidence base may have weakened.
This webinar explores the science of witness memory and what it means for the way you investigate, document, and defend incidents. Join Elizabeth Hyde and Dr Samantha Masley as they unpack the psychology and neuroscience of memory and show how this understanding can strengthen the defence of a prosecution.
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