Initial Testing Does Not Necessarily Affect Eyewitness Recall Assessed by Specific Questioning

Abstract

In eyewitness situations, open recall is followed by specific questioning about the witnessed event. We examined whether initial testing affects later recall of actions and specific details. After watching a video of a bank robbery, participants completed an initial testing phase that involved free recall, specific questions about the actions or details of the event or a control condition with no initial testing. In the final test, correct and incorrect answers, accuracy and response confidence for actions and details were analysed. Initial testing affected neither recall nor confidence. The participants were more accurate for actions than details. Response confidence was higher for correct than incorrect answers and higher for details than actions in correct answers. The results showed that specific questioning affects differently the recall of event actions and details and that remembering details increased confidence. Investigative interviewers can use this evidence when questioning information not reported in initial testing.

Different bias mechanisms in recall and recognition of conceptual and perceptual information of an event

“…These aspects may have affected the results in some way, although, consistent with processing predictions, the patterns of results do not differ too much from those using other video materials. In this sense, the relation between the actions and details recalled and recognized in the present study mimics, for example, the results using short videos or film sequences that summarise criminal events (e.g., Migueles et al, 2016) or the results with case studies of actual crimes (e.g., Woolnough & MacLeod, 2001) in eyewitness memory. It can be concluded that real and staged events might be confronted with a similar cognitive processing style.…”

“…In addition, the results reveal that different event memory biases come into play in recall and recognition tasks. Conceptual commission errors seem to affect recognition tasks more than recall tasks (e.g., Danckert & Craik, 2013;García-Bajos et al, 2012), while perceptual errors are more common in recall tasks (Migueles et al, 2016). In this study, the most striking finding concerning the recall task was the number of commission errors to visual details, while what drew most attention in the recognition task were the number of falsely recognized verbal actions.…”

“…In two recent studies (García-Bajos et al, 2014;Migueles et al, 2016), we discovered a tendency in participants to answer closed questions erroneously in the recall of an event when the items included perceptual details rather than conceptual information, while the opposite pattern is common in recognition tasks (e.g., Zaragoza, Mitchell, Payment, & Drivdahl, 2011). It is possible that, in the recognition task, the main source of errors may lie in the retrieval fluency of the conceptual information (Doss, Bluestone, & Gallo, 2016;Mirandola, Toffalini, Grassano, Cornoldi, & Melinder, 2014;Zaragoza et al, 2011).…”

“…In the free recall of an event, participants remember the main actions better than the details and make very few mistakes (e.g., Migueles & García-Bajos, 1999;Woolnough & MacLeod, 2001). When asked specific questions about an event, participants also remember more conceptual than perceptual information correctly, however, compared with free recall, participants produce more errors, mainly in perceptual information items (García-Bajos, Migueles, & Aizpurua, 2014;Migueles, García-Bajos, Aizpurua, 2016). In recognition tasks, on the other hand, participants incorrectly accept as true more conceptual information, such as the actions contained in the script of the event, than perceptual details, and they do so with greater confidence (e.g., Migueles & García-Bajos, 1999).…”

“…In contrast, an important source of errors in the recall of an event can be the activation of perceptual information accompanying retrieval (García-Bajos et al, 2014;Migueles et al, 2016). Although it has been observed that perceptive details seem to lend veracity to retrieved memories (Israel & Schacter, 1997;Mitchell & Johnson, 2009;Slotnick & Schacter, 2004;Storbeck, 2013) and that presenting information visually rather than aurally (Smith & Hunt, 1998) or using pictures instead of words at encoding (Dodson & Schacter, 2001;Schacter, Israel, & Racine, 1999) can reduce the incidence of false memories in recognition, errors in recall may be due to the vividness of the retrieval of perceptual information, particularly for visual details.…”