Chatting in the face of the eyewitness: The impact of extraneous cell-phone conversation on memory for a perpetrator.

Abstract

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from the work.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cep0000101For more information about UCLan's research in this area go to http://www.uclan.ac.uk/researchgroups/ and search for <name of research Group>. Between 24 and 28 hours later participants freely described the perpetrator's face, constructed a single composite image of the perpetrator from memory, and attempted to identify the perpetrator from a sequential lineup. Further participants rated the likeness of the composites to the perpetrator. Face recall and lineup identification were impaired when participants witnessed the staged-crime in the presence of a meaningful halfalogue compared to a meaningless halfalogue, meaningful dialogue or quiet. Moreover, likeness ratings showed that the composites constructed after ignoring the meaningful halfalogue resembled the perpetrator less than those constructed after experiencing quiet, or ignoring a meaningfulness halfalogue or a meaningful dialogue. The unpredictability of the meaningful content of the halfalogue, rather than its acoustic unexpectedness, produces distraction. The results are novel in that they suggest that an everyday distraction, even when presented in a different modality to target information, can impair the long-term memory of an eyewitness.

Effects of Auditory Distraction on Face Memory

“…The verbal description of another face with different facial features caused a reduced likeness of the created facial composites while the congruent description of the face of the perpetrator did not affect the quality of the facial composites. In a follow-up study 7 , irrelevant speech, per se, did not negatively influence the quality of the facial composites and the identification of the perpetrator face in a photo lineup. Meaningful halfalogues (overhearing one side of a cell-phone conversation), by contrast, disrupted both the quality of the facial composites as well as the identification of the perpetrator face in the lineup.…”

“…Here, we test whether the disruptive effects of background speech generalize to face learning. This is relevant for the evaluation of theories about auditory distraction but also for applied contexts such as eyewitness testimonies 6,7 .…”

“…In particular, the question of whether face learning is affected by task-irrelevant background speech is interesting from a theoretical as well as from an applied perspective. In forensic settings, for instance, it is important to know whether the identification of a perpetrator face is affected by background noise 6,7 .…”

“…33 ). There are, however, a few pioneering studies 6,7 that provide preliminary evidence for an irrelevant speech effect on face processing. In these studies, eyewitnesses were required to create a facial composite of a perpetrator face with the help of a computer program.…”

The Benefits of a Self-Generated Cue Mnemonic for Timeline Interviewing

“…The apparent lack of benefit of SGC under divided attention is noteworthy. The sizeable main effect of the divided attention task across cue conditions suggests that performing a secondary task significantly challenged attentional processes and likely drew participants' attention away from the target event, thus restricting encoding and retrieval (see also Marsh et al, 2017, for a similar DA effect when participants were instructed to ignore distractions). These Introducing Self-Generated Cues to The Timeline Technique 18 findings are consistent with literature on the powerful effect of divided attention on remembering (e.g., Craik et al, 1996) and, although it is not surprising that our task restricted encoding (as intended), it is possible that the to-be-remembered information was not stored from the outset, thus hindering retrieval despite the additional support of cues.…”