How events are reviewed matters: Effects of varied focus on eyewitness suggestibility

Abstract

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.

Retrieval enhances eyewitness suggestibility to misinformation in free and cued recall.

“…Other intrusions included all responses that matched neither the misinformation nor the correct answer. A second coder re-coded 25% of the initial and final cued recall data to establish coding consistencyinterrater agreement (see Lane, Mather, Villa, & Morita, 2001) reached a proportion of .83 and .87 for the initial and final test, respectively.…”

A little elaboration goes a long way: The role of generation in eyewitness suggestibility

“…When witnesses are pressed to describe the physical appearance of a suggested item that they do not remember, they are likely to construct a mental model (e.g., Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998) based on their memory for the event and the knowledge they possess about the characteristics of the item class. As such, participants may be more likely to construct and encode a richer, more elaborate representation of what the item looked like [e.g., in the case of the suggested item hammer, details such as wooden handle, claw, or (had a) black head ] than when the item is read in a narrative or presupposed in a question or when perceptual details are simply described (for similar arguments with respect to the effect of type of postsuggestion review, see Lane, Mather, Villa, & Morita, 2001). Furthermore, given the obtained differences between unconstrained and constrained generation in both the incidence of false memories and the recollective experience that accompanied those memories, it is likely that utilizing idiosyncratic event or semantic knowledge during generation may later make the false memories of suggested items particularly plausible.…”

Protecting eyewitness evidence: Examining the efficacy of a self-administered interview tool.

“…This objective is particularly pertinent in light of a recent finding that misinformation encountered before a detailed statement is obtained may be errantly and persistently recalled in subsequent interview attempts (Lane, Mather, Villa & Morita, 2001). As the SAI allows a comprehensive immediate recall attempt, it clearly has the potential to become a widely used recall tool for forensic investigations.…”