Drawing to Remember: External Support of Older Adults’ Eyewitness Performance

Abstract

Although healthy aging is accompanied by a general decline in memory functioning, environmental support at retrieval can improve older adults’ (+65 years) episodic remembering. Despite those over the age of 65years representing a growing proportion of the population, few environmental retrieval support methods have been empirically evaluated for use with older witnesses and victims of crime. Here, the efficacy of a novel retrieval technique, the Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context, is compared with a standard Mental Reinstatement of Context and a no support control (Control). Fifty-one participants witnessed an unexpected live event, and 48 hours later were interviewed using one of three aforementioned techniques. In line with predictions emanating from cognitive theories of aging and the environmental support hypothesis, participants in the Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context condition recalled significantly more correct information and fewer inaccurate items. The Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context technique appears to scaffold memory retrieval in an age-appropriate manner during a post-event interview, possibly by encouraging more effortful retrieval and reducing dual-task load. As such, this procedure offers an effective alternative to current approaches, adding to the toolbox of techniques available to forensic and other interviewers.

Drawing the answers: Sketching to support free and probed recall by child witnesses and victims with autism spectrum disorder

“…Its purpose was to offer an alternative method by which interviewers could reap the accepted benefits of context reinstatement by addressing problems associated with i) incorrect and infrequent application of MRC (Clarke & Milne, 2001;Dando et al, 2008;, ii) the complexity of the MRC instructions for some witnesses (see 2013;Mattison et al, 2015), and iii) negative effects of incompatible contextual retrieval cues (e.g., Fisher & Craik, 1977;Friestad & Thorson, 1993;Schacter, Norman, & Koutstaal, 1998). Typically, Sketch-RC has been shown to be more effective than the MRC in reducing errors, and increasing correct recall for typically developed and older adults 2009 b ;2011;2013).…”

Measuring the effectiveness of the sketch procedure for recalling details of a live interactive event

“…More recently, Dando (2013) compared the sketch procedure against a control procedure (i.e., no memory aids) and an MRC procedure using a sample of older adults (i.e., >67 years old).…”

Sketching to Remember: Episodic Free Recall Task Support for Child Witnesses and Victims with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…The MRC technique significantly improves episodic remembering, typically reducing errors of omission (increasing the amount of information recalled) without a concomitant increase in errors of commission (the reporting of erroneous information) when used with typically developed adults (e.g., Dando, Wilcock, Milne, & Behnkle, 2011;Dando, Wilcock, & Milne, 2009;Roebers, & McConkey, 2003;Koehnken et al, 1999), some vulnerable witness populations (e.g., older adults: Dando, 2013;Wright & Holliday, 2007; and adults with intellectual disabilities: Kebbell, & Hatton, 1999;Milne, Clare, & Bull, 1999). However, the effects of the MRC when used with typically developing children are somewhat mixed.…”

“…Child witnesses have to receive (understand), and then implement (apply) a series of subjective instructions, which require significant language processing capacity and unimpaired attention and concentration abilities (see Dando, 2013;Dietze, & Thomson, 1993). MRC typically takes in excess of 10 minutes to implement, and so for both typically developing children and children with ASD is at best cognitively demanding, although some researchers have reported that it can improve remembering (see Dietze, & Thomson, 1993, although also see Hershkowitz et al, 2001 Dando, 2013;Dando, Wilcock & Milne 2009;Dando, Wilcock, Milne, & Henry, 2009;Dando, Wilcock, Behnkle, & Milne, 2011). Participants interviewed using the Sketch-RC typically performed equal to, or better than, those interviewed using MRC for the amount of correct information elicited, with no increase in the reporting of erroneous items (erroneous information is discrepant from that which occurred in the stimulus).…”

“…The Sketch-RC technique has been found to significantly increase the number of correct person details reported in adult populations, without a concomitant increase in erroneous recall (Dando, 2013;Dando et al, 2011). The locus of this effect is unclear, but may emanate from the fact that sketching focuses witnesses on personally salient contextual cues that are event-specific, from the very beginning of retrieval.…”