Just taken part in a bit of research. Such opportunities occasionally come up and it's always interesting to see what's going on in various parts of the university.

This one was looking at how to get the best recall from a witness of a crime. I had to watch a video for a couple of minutes and rather than be tested on what I remembered, had to fill in as many lines as I cared to with a fact or observation and then mark on a percentage scale how reliable I thought the memory of it was.

I understand this was being compared with other subjects who were asked to recall what they could in a more narrative fashion.

Just to really stretch the memory, in between the video and the recollection of it, I had to listen to two very short stories and then write down what I recalled of *them*.

The researcher gave me his 'form' (with sets of blank lines and percentage scales) running to about 20 pages. "Use as many as you like - you won't fill it all." I came pretty close though with just a page left by the end. On the other hand I'd started on negative comments such as 'it wasn't raining' (or snowing!) and could have done those forever, so I decided I'd extracted what I could from the sieve of my memory.

I'll look forward to seeing the published results but won't ever get to find out how accurate - or otherwise - I was. Pity.