Three experiments explored the issue of whether enhanced metamnemonic knowledge at retrieval can improve participants' ability to make difficult source discriminations in the context of the eyewitness suggestibility paradigm. The 1st experiment documented differences in phenomenal experience between veridical and false memories. Experiment 2 revealed that drawing participants' attention to these differences by pairing the ratings of the features with instructions about their utility was successful in reducing source misattributions of suggested items to the event. The results of Experiment 3 showed that participants can make online adjustments in the types of evidence used to make source judgments, as participants who received correct feedback during the training portion of the test reduced misattribution errors on the remainder of the test where feedback was not provided. Altogether, these studies suggest that people can discover and benefit from updated knowledge of the types of memorial evidence that discriminate between sources of information in memory.

Witnesses to a crime or an accident perceive that event only once, but they are likely to think or talk about it multiple times. The way in which they review the event may affect their later memory. In particular, some types of review may increase suggestibility if the witness has been exposed to postevent misleading information. In Experiment 1, participants viewed a videotaped crime and then received false suggestions about the event. We found that participants who were then asked to focus on specific details when reviewing the event were more suggestible on a later source memory test than participants asked to review the main points. The findings of Experiment 2 suggest that this effect was not due to a criterion shift at test. These findings indicate that the type of rehearsal engaged in after witnessing an event can have important consequences for memory and, in particular, suggestibility.

In the following study, participants encoded blocked DRM word lists and we varied whether they received information before test about the utility of mnemonic features that potentially discriminate between veridical and false memories. The results of three experiments revealed that this manipulation successfully reduced false recognition of critical theme words. We also found that this manipulation was effective for younger but not older adults. Furthermore, calling attention to the features in test instructions alone was sufficient for reducing false recognition and its effectiveness was not enhanced by also asking participants to rate their phenomenal experience. We argue that providing diagnostic information before test allows participants to establish more accurate expectations about the task and thus improves the efficacy of retrieval and monitoring processes that are subsequently engaged.

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