Memory for directly and indirectly experienced events

Abstract

Retention was examined for an event that was experienced either directly or indirectly. In the first experiment, subjects witnessed a staged event in their classroom involving an argument between two students concerning ownership of a textbook. Subjects in a second study indirectly experienced the event as they heard an account of the book dispute. Immediately following the episode and 2 weeks later both a free-recall test and recognition questionnaire were administered. In free-recall those who witnessed the event remembered nearly as much on the delayed test as they had on the immediate task. For the auditory modality, however, a greater decrement in recall over the retention interval was observed. A similar pattern of results was found in recognition. Additional analyses indicated that actions were retained better than conversation and physical description, and suggested that the type of experience influences how well these aspects of the event are remembered. Interpretations of the overall findings are offered within the context of dual-coding theory and in terms of modality differences in both encoding elaboration and selective attention.What eyewitnesses remember about events and the people involved in them has received increasing attention in recent years, both by cognitive and social psychologists. A variety of methodologies have been employed in the study of event memory. F o r example, Buckhout and his colleagues (e.g. Buckhout, Alper, Chern, Silverberg and Slomovits, 1974;Buckhout, Figueroa and Hoff, 1975) were among the first to adopt the technique of examining eyewitness reports by staging events. Loftus and her associates (Loftus, 1975;Loftus, Altman and Geballe, 1975;Loftus, Miller, and Burns, 1978;Loftus and Palmer, 1974;Loftus and Zanni, 1975;Tousignant, Hall, and Loftus, 1986) have systematically examined the accuracy of eyewitness reports concerning episodes that were presented in a film, videotape, or slide show. Eyewitness accuracy has also been studied in field settings to avoid constraints on realism prossibly present in laboratory studies (e.g. Brigham, Maass, Snyder and Spaulding, 1982;Yuille and Cutshall, 1986). For example, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) were able to interview witnesses to an actual gun-shooting incident 4 5 months after police interviews.Regardless of methodology and modality of experience, eyewitness reports are usually far from accurate (Buckhout, 1974; Ceci, Toglia and Ross,

Fallacies in memory for conversations: Reflections on Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and the Like

“…First, certainly listening to a tape recording of an event is very different from participating in the actual event (see Toglia, Shlechter, andChevalier, 1992, andLarsen andPlunkett, 1987). Second, Anita Hill was remembering directly observed events over a 10-year interval, whereas the present study involved memory for events over only a 5-week or 3-hour retention interval.…”

Remembering a criminal conversation: Beyond eyewitness testimony

“…In previous witness research, however, it has been found that memory for an event witnessed audiovisually may differ from memory for the same event when it is presented in an auditoryonly modality, as was shown in an interesting study carried out by Toglia, Shlechter, and Chevalier (1992). Toglia et al examined memory for an event involving an argument between two students that was experienced either in an audiovisual modality, in which participants witnessed the staged live event (Experiment 1), or in an auditory-only modality, in which participants listened to a written version of the same event that was read aloud to them (Experiment 2).…”

“…It appears, therefore, that there are different rates of forgetting for witnessing a conversational event audiovisually and witnessing it in an auditory-only mode (Toglia et al, 1992). One possible explanation focuses on differences in encoding elaboration processes.…”

Enhancing Adults' and Children’s Earwitness Memory: Examining Three Types of Interviews

“…Research has shown that children and adults in an auditory-only condition tend to report less correct information (e.g., Campos & Alonso-Quecuty, 2006;Gibbons, Anderson, Smith, Field, & Fischer, 1986) and show a greater decrement in memory performance after a delay (e.g., Toglia, Shlechter, & Chevalier, 1992) compared with participants in an audio-visual condition. This makes our finding, that the CI elicited relatively more correct recall and resulted in relatively less forgetting, even more important.…”