Ambiguous crimes and inattentional blindness: the science of eyewitness memoryAmbiguous crimes and inattentional blindness: the science of eyewitness memory
All In The Mind
If you saw a crime, how clearly would you remember it? What about if you were questioned years… even decades later? Eyewitness testimony is an important part of the justice system, so how much do we know about our ability to recall details? In part three of our four-part series, Forensic, we take a deeper look at eyewitness memory. Because it's not just about what we can or can't recall, there's also the risk that we may not even recognise a crime as it's happening. It turns out we're sometimes less observant than we think, because of a phenomenon called inattentional blindness. Don't forget to send us your questions based on the Forensic series, you can reach us at allinthemind@abc.net.au Guests: Celine van Golde Associate Professor in Legal Psychology University of Sydney Hayley Cullen Lecturer School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University Credits: Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar Senior producer/reporter: James Bullen Producer: Rose Kerr Sound engineer: Roi Huberman You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
29:36•22 May 2026
Can You Trust What You Saw? Eyewitness Memory Under the Microscope
Episode Overview
- Eyewitness testimony carries huge weight in court, yet people may remember only around 30% of an event’s details after days or months.
- The brain routinely fills memory gaps with details from other sources, leading to source monitoring mistakes that can misidentify people or actions.
- Inattentional blindness shows that intense focus on a task can make someone miss an obvious event, including crimes happening metres away.
- Crimes like kidnapping can look ordinary if there’s no struggle, meaning witnesses might not tag the event as a crime and recall it differently later.
- Better understanding of how memory works could reduce wrongful convictions while still helping secure genuine convictions in cases that rely heavily on testimony.
“"Memory decays very rapidly. So within the first even hour that we've experienced something, we will forget about 60% of details of what we've witnessed."”
What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? Here, the focus shifts to a different kind of human limitation: how much you can really trust your memory when a crime unfolds in front of you. All In The Mind’s forensic series turns to eyewitness memory, with host Sana Kadar and reporter James Bullen unpacking why someone might swear they’re “100% certain” in court, while their brain has quietly misfiled half the details.
Legal psychologist Dr Selene Van Gold explains how memory races through encoding, storage and retrieval, and how “within the first even hour that we've experienced something, we will forget about 60% of details of what we've witnessed.” You’ll hear how the brain fills gaps with TV scenes, other memories, or even a co‑witness’s comments, leading to “source monitoring mistakes” that can tip a trial towards a wrongful conviction.
Then lecturer Dr Hayley Cullen brings in inattentional blindness – essentially, looking without seeing. Remember that famous “moonwalking bear” video? Half the people miss a man in a bear suit because they’re busy counting basketball passes. Hayley links this to real cases, like a police officer who literally didn’t see a brutal assault metres away, and to ambiguous crimes such as kidnappings where a child walks off calmly with an adult.
Through experiments at bus stops and stories from real cases, the episode shows how easily a screaming child, a punch, or a key detail can fade into the background if someone is focused on their own task. It’s sobering stuff for anyone who assumes they’d be the “perfect witness”. If memory can be this shaky, what does that mean for justice, and how might that challenge the way you think about your own recall under stress?
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