Fiona Gabbert

Say it to my face: Examining the effects of socially encountered misinformation

Objectives. Errors in eyewitness accounts can occur when a witness comes into contact with post-event ‘misinformation’. A common way to encounter misinformation is through face-to-face interaction, in particular, via conversation with other individuals who also witnessed the crime. The current research compares this kind of misinformation with the non-social post-event narrative method typically employed in laboratory studies. Method. Young (17–33 years) and older (58–80 years) adults viewed a simulated crime event on video and were later exposed to four items of misinformation about it. The misinformation items were either introduced as part of a discussion about the event with a confederate or were embedded within a written narrative about the event that participants were asked to read. A questionnaire containing 20 items about the event was given to participants before and after the experimental manipulation. Results. Participants were less accurate than controls on questionnaire items after encountering misinformation. More importantly, misinformation encountered socially was significantly more misleading than misinformation from a non-social source. This was true for both young and older adults. Conclusion. Misinformation encountered socially produced more errors than misinformation from a non-social source. This finding has implications both for applied (forensic) and theoretical understanding of eyewitness memory.

Memory conformity : Disentangling the steps toward influence during a discussion

When two people see the same event and discuss it, one person’s memory report can influence what the other person subsequently claims to remember. We refer to this asmemory conformity. In the present article, two factors underlying the memory conformity effect are investigated. First, are there any characteristics of the dialogue that predict memory conformity? Second, is memory conformity differentially affected when information is encountered that omits, adds to, or contradicts originally encoded items? Participants were tested in pairs. The two members of each pair encoded slightly different versions of complex scenes and discussed them prior to an individual free recall test. The discussions were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. Our most striking finding was that the witness initiating the discussion was most likely to influence the other witness’s memory report. Furthermore, witnesses were most likely to be influenced when an additional (previously unseen) item of information was encountered in the discussion.

When Eyewitnesses Talk

When two people witness an event, they often discuss it. Because memory is not perfect, sometimes this discussion includes errors. One persons errors can become part of another persons account, and this proliferation of error can lead to miscarriages of justice. In this article, we describe the social and cognitive processes involved. Research shows how people combine information about their own memory with other peoples memories based on factors such as confidence, perceived expertise, and the social cost of disagreeing with other people. We describe the implications of this research for eyewitness testimony.

Registered Replication Report

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal overshadowing” effect (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). More recent studies suggested that this effect might be substantially smaller than first reported. Given uncertainty about the effect size, the influence of this finding in the memory literature, and its practical importance for police procedures, we conducted two collections of preregistered direct replications (RRR1 and RRR2) that differed only in the order of the description task and a filler task. In RRR1, when the description task immediately followed the robbery, participants who provided a description were 4% less likely to select the robber than were those in the control condition. In RRR2, when the description was delayed by 20 min, they were 16% less likely to select the robber. These findings reveal a robust verbal overshadowing effect that is strongly influenced by the relative timing of the tasks. The discussion considers further implications of these replications for our understanding of verbal overshadowing.

Changing the criterion for memory conformity in free recall and recognition

Peoples responses during memory studies are affected by what other people say. This memory conformity effect has been shown in both free recall and recognition. Here we examine whether accurate, inaccurate, and suggested answers are affected similarly when the response criterion is varied. In the first study, participants saw four pictures of detailed scenes and then discussed the content of these scenes with another participant who saw the same scenes, but with a couple of details changed. Participants were either told to recall everything they could and not to worry about making mistakes (lenient), or only to recall items if they were sure that they were accurate (strict). The strict instructions reduced the amount of inaccurate information reported that the other person suggested, but also reduced the number of accurate details recalled. In the second study, participants were shown a large set of faces and then their memory recognition was tested with a confederate on these and fillers. Here also, the criterion manipulation shifted both accurate and inaccurate responses, and those suggested by the confederate. The results are largely consistent with a shift in response criterion affecting accurate, inaccurate, and suggested information. In addition we varied the level of secrecy in the participants’ responses. The effects of secrecy were complex and depended on the level of response criterion. Implications for interviewing eyewitnesses and line-ups are discussed.

Improving the identification accuracy of senior witnesses: Do prelineup questions and sequential testing help?

Eyewitness research has identified sequential lineup testing as a way of reducing false lineup choices while maintaining accurate identifications. The authors examined the usefulness of this procedure for reducing false choices in older adults. Young and senior witnesses viewed a crime video and were later presented with target present orabsent lineups in a simultaneous or sequential format. In addition, some participants received prelineup questions about their memory for a perpetrators face and about their confidence in their ability to identify the culprit or to correctly reject the lineup. The sequential lineup reduced false choosing rates among young and older adults in target-absent conditions. In target-present conditions, sequential testing significantly reduced the correct identification rate in both age groups.

A field evaluation of the VIPER system: a new technique for eliciting eyewitness identification evidence

Advances in technology have led to a new system for gathering facial identification evidence from eyewitnesses with accompanying changes in legislation in the UK. The current paper presents the responses of 1718 real witnesses and victims who attempted an identification from a video parade in Scotland in 2008. The witnesses comprised a large subset who were classified as ‘vulnerable’ due to their age, ability or the nature of the incident. Suspect identifications averaged 44%, a figure comparable to the rate reported in other field studies conducted in the UK. The foil identification rate at 42% is higher than other field data. The paper discusses the effects of witness age, vulnerability, perceived emotional state, crime type, delay and procedural aspects of the video procedure on suspect identifications.

Witnesses in Action The Effect of Physical Exertion on Recall and Recognition

Understanding memory performance under different operational conditions is critical in many occupational settings. To examine the effect of physical exertion on memory for a witnessed event, we placed two groups of law-enforcement officers in a live, occupationally relevant scenario. One group had previously completed a high-intensity physical-assault exercise, and the other had not. Participants who completed the assault exercise showed impaired recall and recognition performance compared with the control group. Specifically, they provided significantly less accurate information concerning critical and incidental target individuals encountered during the scenario, recalled less briefing information, and provided fewer briefing updates than control participants did. Exertion was also associated with reduced accuracy in identifying the critical target from a lineup. These results support arousal-based competition accounts proposing differential allocation of resources under physiological arousal. These novel findings relating to eyewitness memory performance have important implications for victims, ordinary citizens who become witnesses, and witnesses in policing, military, and related operational contexts.

Suggestibility in legal contexts : psychological research and forensic implications

Contributors ix Series Preface xi Preface xiii Acknowledgements xv 1 Suggestibility: A History and Introduction 1 Anne M. Ridley 2 The Misinformation Effect: Past Research and Recent Advances 21 Quin M. Chrobak and Maria S. Zaragoza 3 Interrogative Suggestibility and Compliance 45 Gisli H. Gudjonsson 4 Suggestibility and Memory Conformity 63 Fiona Gabbert and Lorraine Hope 5 Suggestibility and Individual Differences: Psychosocial and Memory Measures 85 Anne M. Ridley and Gisli H. Gudjonsson 6 Recovered Memories and Suggestibility for Entire Events 107 James Ost 7 Suggestibility and Individual Differences in Typically Developing and Intellectually Disabled Children 129 Kamala London, Lucy A. Henry, Travis Conradt and Ryan Corser 8 Suggestibility in Vulnerable Groups: Witnesses with Intellectual Disability, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Older People 149 Katie L. Maras and Rachel Wilcock 9 Acute Suggestibility in Police Interrogation: Self-regulation Failure as a Primary Mechanism of Vulnerability 171 Deborah Davis and Richard A. Leo 10 Suggestibility and Witness Interviewing using the Cognitive Interview and NICHD Protocol 197 David J. La Rooy, Deirdre Brown and Michael E. Lamb 11 Suggestibility in Legal Contexts: What Do We Know? 217 Anne M. Ridley, Fiona Gabbert and David J. La Rooy Index 229

Providing eyewitnesses with initial retrieval support: what works at immediate and subsequent recall?

The effect of retrieval support on eyewitness recall was investigated in two experiments. Based on the outshining hypothesis, Experiment 1 tested whether retrieval support enhances witness performance (compared to free recall) especially when witnessing conditions are suboptimal (e.g., because witnesses were distracted during the crime). Eighty-eight participants watched a videotaped crime with either full or divided attention and subsequently received retrieval support with the Self-Administered Interview© (SAI) or completed a free recall (FR). One week later (Time 2 – T2) all participants completed a second FR. Unexpectedly, retrieval support did not lead to better memory performance than FR under divided attention conditions, suggesting that retrieval support is not effective to overcome adverse effects of divided attention. Moreover, presence of retrieval support at Time 1 (T1) had no effect on memory performance at T2. Experiment 2 (N = 81) tested the hypothesis that these T2-results were due to a reporting issue undermining the memory-preserving effect of T1-retrieval support by manipulating retrieval support (SAI vs. FR) at T1 and T2. As expected, T1-retrieval support led to increased accuracy at T2. Thus, the beneficial value of T1-retrieval support seems greatest with high-quality T2-interviews. Interviewers should consider this when planning a subsequent interview.