Suspects' consistency in statements concerning two events when different question formats are used

Lie detection research has typically focused on reports about a single event. However, in many forensic and security contexts, suspects are likely to report on several events, some of them may be untruthful. This presents interviewers with the challenge of detecting which reports are true and which are not. Varying question format in a second interview, we examined differences in liars' and truth‐tellers' statement consistency about two events. One hundred and fifty participants viewed a meeting in which a noncritical and a critical event were discussed. Truth‐tellers were instructed to be honest in their reports about both events, whereas liars had to lie about the critical event. In the first interview, all participants provided a free recall account. In a second interview, participants either gave another free recall account or responded to specific questions presented sequentially (concerning one event at a time) or nonsequentially (concerning both events simultaneously). Liars' accounts featured fewer repetitions than truth‐tellers for both events, particularly in response to questions presented in nonsequential order. The implications for the use of this question format are discussed.     

Emotional content of true and false memories

Many people believe that emotional memories (including those that arise in therapy) are particularly likely to represent true events because of their emotional content. But is emotional content a reliable indicator of memory accuracy? The current research assessed the emotional content of participants’ pre-existing (true) and manipulated (false) memories for childhood events. False memories for one of three emotional childhood events were planted using a suggestive manipulation and then compared, along several subjective dimensions, with other participants’ true memories. On most emotional dimensions (e.g., how emotional was this event for you?), true and false memories were indistinguishable. On a few measures (e.g., intensity of feelings at the time of the event), true memories were more emotional than false memories in the aggregate, yet true and false memories were equally likely to be rated as uniformly emotional. These results suggest that even substantial emotional content may not reliably indicate memory accuracy.     

Creating false memories for events that occurred before versus after the offset of childhood amnesia

We examined whether false images and memories for childhood events are more likely when the event supposedly took place during the period of childhood amnesia. Over three interviews, participants recalled six events: five true and one false. Some participants were told that the false event happened when they were 2 years old (Age 2 group), while others were told that it happened when they were 10 years old (Age 10 group). We compared participants’ reports of the false event to their reports of a true event from the same age. Consistent with prior research on childhood amnesia, participants in the Age 10 group were more likely than participants in the Age 2 group to remember their true event and they reported more information about it. Participants in the Age 2 group, on the other hand, were more likely to develop false images and memories than participants in the Age 10 group. Furthermore, once a false image or memory developed, there were no age-related differences in the amount of information participants reported about the false event. We conclude that childhood amnesia increases our susceptibility to false suggestion, thus our results have implications for court cases where early memories are at issue.     

Creating false memories for events that occurred before versus after the offset of childhood amnesia

We examined whether false images and memories for childhood events are more likely when the event supposedly took place during the period of childhood amnesia. Over three interviews, participants recalled six events: five true and one false. Some participants were told that the false event happened when they were 2 years old (Age 2 group), while others were told that it happened when they were 10 years old (Age 10 group). We compared participants' reports of the false event to their reports of a true event from the same age. Consistent with prior research on childhood amnesia, participants in the Age 10 group were more likely than participants in the Age 2 group to remember their true event and they reported more information about it. Participants in the Age 2 group, on the other hand, were more likely to develop false images and memories than participants in the Age 10 group. Furthermore, once a false image or memory developed, there were no age-related differences in the amount of information participants reported about the false event. We conclude that childhood amnesia increases our susceptibility to false suggestion, thus our results have implications for court cases where early memories are at issue.     

警告对共同目击者讨论后产生的错误记忆的影响

采用误导信息干扰范式,研究了事件后正确诱导与事件后误导对共同目击者的记忆准确性的影响。实验1,要求被试接受事件后诱导信息后进行线索化自由回忆,结果发现,目击者对事件后正确诱导信息项目的记忆准确性显著提高;对事件后误导信息项目的记忆准确性显著下降,产生了共同目击者误导信息效应。实验2,研究了警告对目击者记忆准确性的影响。在回忆前警告被试共同目击者提供的事件后信息不完全正确,请按照自己的记忆来完成线索化自由回忆,讨论无警告组与讨论警告组比较发现,警告并没有改变事件后误导信息效应,也没有改变目击者对正确诱导项目     

Fabrication inflation increases as source monitoring ability decreases

The current research looked at the effects of lying about a false childhood event on the liar's memory for the event. Participants attempted to convince researchers that false events had actually happened to them. In Experiment 1, participants showed a Fabrication Inflation Effect in that they were more likely to increase their beliefs in the lied-about events than control events. Individual differences such as scores on the Dissociative Experience Scale, frequency of lying, and self-reported feelings of discomfort while lying were related to rates of fabrication inflation. In Experiment 2, participants also showed fabrication inflation and were more likely to inflate their likelihood ratings when the lie was created during a separate session from the posttest. Results from both studies support the idea that Source Monitoring failures may cause participants to increase their likelihood ratings of lied-about events. These results suggest that intentional lying may lead some participants to increase their beliefs in their own fabrications. Applications to the legal field are discussed.     

The effect of question expectedness and experience on lying about intentions

In recent years researchers have started to focus on lying about intentions (Granhag, 2010). In the present experiment participants were interviewed about their forthcoming trip. We tested the hypothesis that liars (N=43) compared to truth tellers (N=43) would give fewer details to unexpected questions about planning, transportation and the core event, but an equal amount or more detail to expected questions about the purpose of the trip. We also tested the hypothesis that participants who had previously experienced the intention (i.e., they had made such a trip before) would give more detail than those who had never experienced the intended action. The unexpected question hypothesis was supported, whereas the previous experience effect only emerged in interactions. The benefit of using different types of questions for lie detection purposes is discussed.     

Facilitating eyewitness memory in adults and children with context reinstatement and focused meditation

This study examined the comparative efficacy of two brief techniques for facilitating eyewitness memory in police investigations. Adult and child participants (N = 126; 64 children and 62 adults) who had viewed a videotape of a crime were subsequently tested for their memory of the event following either a focused meditation procedure (FM, derived from hypnotic interviewing techniques), a context reinstatement procedure (CR, a component of the cognitive interview), or a control procedure (no memory facilitation instructions). For both adults and children, the FM and CR procedures enhanced performance on both open‐ended and closed questions to levels above those achieved by controls, although those in the CR condition produced significantly more correct responses than those in the FM condition. However, only those in the CR group displayed elevated levels of confidence in relation to incorrect responses on closed questions. Implications for the possible use of such procedures are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measurement of individual differences in children's suggestibility across situations

The authors attempted to use scores on the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC, M. H. Scullin & S. J. Ceci, 2001) to predict 50 preschool children's performance during a field study in which they were interviewed suggestively 4 times about both a true event and a suggested event. Among the 25 children over age 4 years 6 months, tendencies on the VSSC to respond affirmatively to suggestive questions ("yield"), change answers in response to negative feedback ("shift"), and the sum of these ("total suggestibility") were all related to lack of accuracy about the true event in the field study and to both accuracy and lack of accuracy about the suggested event. Results support a 2-factor model of suggestibility.     

Effects of the timing of postevent information on preschoolers' memories of an event

Few researchers have investigated whether the timing of postevent information affects the accuracy of children's reports of events they have experienced. In this study, four‐year‐olds dressed up in costumes and had their photographs taken. An unfamiliar adult spoke to the children about the event either a day (immediate condition) or a month (delayed condition) later, providing both accurate and misleading information about the staged event. When questioned five weeks after the event, children in a control group who had not received the review were more inaccurate answering focused questions than children who had been reminded of the event. A review a while after the event but shortly before the interview increased the amount of details recalled and this was not at the expense of accuracy. Misinformation was seldom reported spontaneously, although children in all groups acquiesced to leading questions in line with the misleading suggestions. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adults also have difficulty recalling one instance of a repeated event

Some forms of abuse, such as domestic violence, tend to occur repeatedly. Although memory for repeated events has received considerable empirical attention, most of this research has used a child sample. Experiments that have examined adult repeated‐event memory tend to use vastly different methodological paradigms to that used for children. To investigate whether the same pattern of findings emerge with young adults, we adapted the methodological paradigm used in child repeated‐event experiments. In this experiment, 41 undergraduate students experienced one, or multiple similar events. All participants were then interviewed about the same event. Participants who had experienced a single‐event were more likely to report correct details than those who had experienced a repeated event. Repeated‐event participants were more likely to report general details. These results have implications for the methodological paradigm which is used to examine adult memory for a recurring event.     

The role of accuracy motivation on children's and adults' event recall

To examine the role of accuracy motivation in event recall, 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old children and adults were shown a short video about a conflict between two groups of children. Three weeks later, participants were asked a set of unbiased specific questions about the video. Following A. Koriat and M. Goldsmith's (1994) distinction of quantity- and quality-oriented memory assessments, and based on their model of strategic regulation of memory accuracy (1996), accuracy motivation was manipulated across three conditions. Participants were (a) forced to provide an answer to each question (low accuracy motivation), (b) initially instructed to withhold uncertain answers by saying "I don't know" (medium accuracy motivation), or (c) rewarded for every single correct answer (high accuracy motivation). When motivation for accuracy was high, children as young as 6 were to withhold uncertain answers to the benefit of accuracy. The expected quality-quantity trade-off emerged only for peripheral items but not for the central items. Participants who were forced to provide an answer gave more correct answers but also high numbers of incorrect answers than participants who had the option to answer "I don't know." The results are discussed in terms of the underlying model as well as in terms of forensic interviewing.     

Is saccade-induced retrieval enhancement a potential means of improving eyewitness evidence?

Saccade-induced retrieval enhancement (SIRE) is the effect whereby making bilateral saccades enhances the subsequent retrieval of memories. Two experiments explored SIRE's potential to improve eyewitness evidence. Participants viewed slideshows depicting crimes, and received contradictory and additive misinformation about event details either once (Experiment 1) or three times (Experiment 2). Participants then performed saccades or a fixation control task before being tested on their memory for the slideshows and making confidence judgements. Saccades increased discrimination between seen and unseen event details regardless of whether or what type of misinformation was presented. Because prior studies indicated that SIRE might be more robust for individuals who are strongly right-handed versus not, we examined SIRE as a function of handedness and found that saccades improved memory for event details regardless of participants' handedness. However, participants who were not strongly right-handed had fewer false memories than participants who were strongly right-handed, extending previous findings of superior memory among individuals who are not strongly right-handed. Saccades also increased confidence in true memories (Experiment 1) and decreased confidence in false memories (Experiment 2). The results support SIRE's potential to improve eyewitness evidence.     

Skill in Interviewing Reduces Confirmation Bias

Interviewers given prior information are biassed to seek it from interviewees. We examined whether the detrimental impact of this confirmation bias in terms of leading question use was moderated by interviewers' demonstrated ability to adhere to open questions. We classified interviewers' adherence as ‘good’ or ‘poor’ in an independent interview before they interviewed children about a staged event. Half the interviewers were given biassing true and false information about the event; half were given no information. As predicted, only poor interviewers showed the effect of bias. Poor interviewers asked fewer open questions in the biassed condition than the non‐biassed condition; good interviewers asked the same (high) proportion of open questions in both conditions. Poor interviewers asked more leading questions in the biassed condition than the non‐biassed condition; good interviewers asked the same (low) proportion of leading questions in both conditions. These results demonstrate that interviewers' skill in adhering to open questions reduces the detrimental impact of confirmation bias on question type. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Protecting Against Misleading Post‐event Information with a Self‐Administered Interview

Two studies investigated whether an early recall opportunity, in the form of a self‐administered interview (SAI), reduced forgetting and protected against the negative consequences of post‐event misinformation. In both studies, participants viewed a simulated crime on DVD after which half immediately recorded their statement by using the SAI, whereas control participants did not have an immediate recall opportunity. Following a delay, participants were presented with misinformation encountered either in a misleading news report (Study 1) or in the form of misleading cued‐recall questions (Study 2). Results showed that participants who had completed a SAI after witnessing an event were significantly less prone to forgetting and significantly more resistant to the negative consequences of misinformation. The SAI was able to protect both the quantity and quality of information about a previously witnessed event. Applied implications are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effects of Accuracy Motivation on Children's and Adults' Event Recall,Suggestibility, and Their Answers to Unanswerable Questions

This study investigated children's and adults' event recall accuracy and suggestibility effects when participants' accuracy motivation was manipulated. A total of 240 participants (6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds, and adults) were shown a video and later asked 4 types of questions: answerable questions, both open-ended and strongly misleading, and unanswerable questions, both open-ended and strongly misleading. Participants were either (a) rewarded with a token for every correct answer (high accuracy motivation, Free Report Plus Incentive condition), (b) explicitly given the option of answering with "don't know" when unsure (medium accuracy motivation, Free Report condition), or (c) asked to provide an answer to every question, even when they were not sure or had to guess or both (low accuracy motivation, Forced Report condition). The condition with the high accuracy motivation yielded the highest recall accuracy scores for answerable open-ended and misleading questions. For unanswerable questions, even the youngest age group was able to increase the number of appropriate "don't know" answers when highly motivated to be accurate, but a misleading question format undermined these abilities. The results highlight important interactions between social (accuracy motivation) and cognitive factors (metacognitive monitoring processes) in children's formal interviewing.     

The effect of question type on resistance to misinformation about present and absent details

The typical misinformation effect shows that accuracy is lower for details about which people received misleading compared to non-misleading (control) information. In two experiments, we examined the misinformation effect for non-witnessed details (i.e., absent). Three question types introduced control, misleading, and absent details (closed, closed-detailed, and open questions) about a mock burglary video. On this misinformation test, participants' reports of absent details were less accurate than control details only when they were introduced using open questions. Misinformation effects in a subsequent recognition test were present for misleading details in both experiments, but for absent details only in Experiment 2. Experiment 2 also revealed that participants who avoided answering open questions containing misleading and absent details had more accurate memories for these details on the subsequent recognition test than participants who answered these questions. In both experiments, confidence was lowest for absent details. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Finding character strengths through loss: An extension of Peterson and Seligman (2003)

People can experience positive changes even in the midst of adversity and loss. We investigated character strengths following three recent shooting tragedies. Using an Internet database of respondents to the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS), we compared responses from three groups of participants (N?=?31,429) within close proximity of each event: those who completed it eight months prior to the event, and one month and two months after. Results suggested that for one of the events, participants who completed the VIA-IS after the event showed slightly different levels of self-reported character strengths compared to participants who completed the VIA-IS before the event, with some mean levels higher and others lower. The observed differences in character strengths were inconsistent across follow-up periods, and effect sizes were small (d values from –0.13 to 0.15). These findings raise questions about whether and how tragedies might catalyze differences in character strengths.     

Fabrication deflation? The mixed effects of lying on memory

This study explored what happens when participants lie in order to convince others that false stories are true. Participants' memories were assessed by comparing their likelihood ratings for the events before and after lying about them. Results showed that most participants rated the events as less likely to have happened after lying about them. Therefore, the most common result of lying seems to be a strengthening of, not a distortion of, the truth. This decrease in likelihood rating for the statement lied about is termed ‘fabrication deflation’. In both studies, however, there were 10–16% of the participants who indicated maximum belief that the lie item was true. Whether this increase in likelihood rating for a lied about event is evidence of memory creation or the triggering of an actual memory is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dividing attention during a witnessed event increases eyewitness suggestibility

Real‐life witnesses often encounter complex situations that may prevent them from devoting their full attention to encoding forensically‐relevant information about the event. Although prior research has demonstrated that divided attention can impair aspects of event memory, the current study examined the effect of attention during encoding of the event on participants' memory for the source of post‐event misleading information. Participants first viewed a slide sequence depicting a theft under full or divided attention conditions. Subsequently, they answered questions about the event that included misleading information, and finally received a source test. Results revealed that Divided Attention participants showed poorer memory for event items and were more likely to misattribute post‐event misinformation to the event than were Full Attention participants. The findings suggest that typical laboratory conditions (which allow full deployment of attentional resources during encoding) may underestimate the suggestibility of witnesses. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.