How real recollection differs from a fabrication

Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England uses a method called Criteria-Based Content Analysis to help police identify whether the retelling of an incident is truthful. The method is based on research indicating that a story of a real recollection differs from a fabrication in specific ways.

According to Vrij, actual experiences have the following properties:

1. They are coherent and consistent but generally not in chronological order.
2. They contain a lot of detail and include unusual and superfluous elements.
3. They depict personal interactions and reiterate speech and conversation.
4. They describe feelings and thoughts - the narrator's and in many cases those the storyteller ascribes to the perpetrator.
5. They contain spontaneous corrections, the admission of memory gaps and doubts about the believability of the story.