Environmental context-dependent eyewitness recognition

The present study helped resolve the apparent conflict between many laboratory list-learning studies, which have not found environmental context-dependent recognition memory, and staged field studies (e.g. Malpass and Devine, 1981), whose results with ‘guided memory’ techniques suggest that eyewitness face recognition should depend upon environmental context reinstatement. It was found in two different experiments that, relative to testing in a new place, returning participants to the environment where a live staged event had occurred improved performance on identification of a confederate's face (i.e., hit rate). Although physical reinstatement improved identification performance in Experiment 1, mental reinstatement instructions to subjects tested in a new environment did not improve identification performance over an uninstructed group. The environmental reinstatement effect did not interact with test delay or confederate. In Experiment 2 it was found that environmental reinstatement improved accuracy (hit rate and foil identification rate) when the correct target was present in the test line-up, and that false identifications were not significantly affected by contextual manipulations when the correct target was absent from the line-up. The results provide an empirical basis for the hypothesis that returning to the scene of an event improves eyewitness face recognition.     

Positive and negative effects of physical context reinstatement on eyewitness recall and identification

The impact of context reinstatement (CR) on eyewitness recall and identification was explored in this study. Participants viewed a video of a staged theft and, following a 1‐week interval, were asked to identify the culprit and recall the event in either the same or in a different physical environment. Results suggested that CR enhanced the perceived familiarity of the lineup members, which in turn increased participants' willingness to identify someone in the lineup. Although CR significantly improved facial discrimination and identification accuracy when the target was present, it also increased confidence ratings beyond that warranted by the increase in accuracy. In terms of recall, reinstating the study context improved participants' free recall of both central and peripheral details and cued recall of peripheral details. The results were consistent with a (mis)attribution of familiarity and the outshining hypothesis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rehearsal of faces and details in action events

The relationship between mental rehearsal and facial identification accuracy was explored in two experiments involving either a staged classroom event or a video scenario. The results suggest that when subjects rehearsed immediately following an event, compared to subjects in non-rehearsal conditions, identification accuracy was increased when the target face was unchanged in appearance but was reduced when the face was changed slightly in appearance from viewing to test. However, when rehearsal of the event was delayed 10 minutes, identification accuracy was improved even when the face had changed in appearance. Immediate rehearsal, in contrast, led to a reduction in identification performance. In short, in some circumstances the gains in specific memory brought about by mental rehearsal serve to reduce than improve identification accuracy. The relevance of these findings to memory theory and everyday eyewitness testimony is discussed.     

Retrieval of Episodic Information From Memory: Comparisons Among 3- and 4-Year-Olds, 7- and 8-Year-Olds,and Adults

Young children's and adults' recall of episodic information was explored in 4 experiments. The task required participants to recall a target noun presented as the last item of a 4-noun string of related (either categorically or thematically) or unrelated words. Providing all 3 preceding nouns or a subset of them cued recall. Experiment 1 found that 7- and 8-year-old children's recall was better with pictures as opposed to text, and children showed performance equal to adults with thematically related pictorial stimuli. Using pictorial stimuli, Experiment 2 showed that the number of cues present at retrieval affected 7- and 8-year-olds' recall. Experiments 3 and 4 tested recall of episodic information in 3- and 4-year-olds using pictorial stimuli. The results suggested that young children also have access to episodic information in memory and the number of cues present at retrieval influenced recall. The findings are discussed in the context of children's memory for events.     

Effects of cannabis on eyewitness memory: A field study

Eyewitnesses to crimes are regularly under the influence of drugs, such as cannabis. Yet there is very little research on how the use of cannabis affects eyewitness memory. In the present study, we assessed the effects of cannabis on eyewitness recall and lineup identification performance in a field setting. One hundred twenty visitors of coffee shops in Amsterdam viewed a videotaped criminal event, were interviewed about the event, and viewed a target‐present or target‐absent lineup. Witnesses under the influence of cannabis remembered significantly fewer correct details about the witnessed event than did sober witnesses, with no difference in incorrect recall. Cannabis use was not significantly associated with lineup identification performance, but intoxicated witnesses were significantly better at judging whether their lineup identification was accurate. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Recognition and recall in amnesics

Although there is considerable agreement that performance in direct memory tasks (e.g., recall, recognition) is more disrupted by amnesia than performance in indirect memory tasks (e.g., mirror reading, word completion), one may be able to further circumscribe the deficit within the domain of direct memory tasks. The present article explores whether recall is disproportionately disrupted by amnesia compared to recognition. If amnesia affects memory uniformly across different direct memory measures, recall of normal controls should not differ from the recall of amnesics when recognition scores of these two groups are equated. On the other hand, if recall is disproportionately disrupted, normal recall should be superior to amnesic recall even when recognition is equated. The present study equated amnesic recognition with that of controls by providing amnesics with 8 s of study time and normal subjects with 0.5 s. Amnesics with Korsakoff's syndrome, amnesics with other etiologies, and appropriate controls were examined. Normal recall was superior to amnesic recall even when no differences were found in recognition. The results further specify the selective nature of amnesia.     

Eyewitness Memory and Metamemory in Product Identification: Evidence for Familiarity Biases

Research on the reliability of eyewitness memory for criminal events has been extensively studied, but eyewitness memory in civil cases has not. However, many of these civil cases revolve around eyewitness memory for events that transpired decades ago. We have developed a paradigm with which to study memory for specific product brand identification, a common question in civil cases involving product liability. Participants were asked to follow recipes and were then given surprise memory tests on the specific brands of products used. In addition, they were asked to report their subjective confidence for each response. Memory and performance was poor after even a brief delay, as was metamemory accuracy: Confidence regarding brand name recall was a poor indicator of accuracy. Participants also displayed a strong familiarity bias. They frequently reported using familiar, common brands, when no such products were actually used. This was especially true at longer delays, after which false identification of familiar products was twice as common as correct responses.     

Process versus content in eyewitness metamemory monitoring

Three studies (Ns = 200, 135, and 187 college undergraduates) contrasted process versus content accounts of eyewitness metamemory monitoring. Subjective vividness, a cue related to memory content, was a better predictor of confidence and accuracy than were cues related to the retrieval process. Participants who were asked to recall, rather than recognize, event details displayed greater insight into accuracy, primarily because vividness was a more valid accuracy cue under recall conditions. Results reinforce the value of recall-based protocols for eliciting eyewitness testimony and suggest some specific conditions (e.g., yes-no recognition) under which investigators should be especially cautious in relying on confidence to infer accuracy. In addition, results point to a general framework for understanding moderating effects on eyewitness metamemory accuracy.     

A comparison of adults’ and children's metacognition for yes/no recognition decisions

Basic metacognitive development research suggests that metacognitive abilities develop before adolescence. However, this research has not used tasks that require the discrimination of seen from unseen stimuli, an important element of real-world recognition tasks such as eyewitness identification. We tested the idea that children would be less able to monitor and control the accuracy of their memories in such a task. We used a word-pair recognition task to compare children's (109 8–12 year olds) and adult's (102 first-year psychology students) ability to adaptively make, monitor, and control the reporting of yes/no recognition decisions about familiar stimuli in a task with no demand effects. We found that adults were substantially better at discriminating old from new stimuli, but no evidence of an age difference in metacognitive ability. Although these results do not explain children's poor metacognition in eyewitness identification, they suggest potential steps to improve children's identification performance.     

Contextual overlap and eyewitness suggestibility

Studies of eyewitness suggestibility have traditionally used a paradigm that maximizes the extent to which the postevent interview overlaps with the witnessed event in terms of narrative content, narrative structure, and environmental context. The present study explored whether these dimensions of overlap contribute to people's tendency to confuse suggested details for those they have actually witnessed. We systematically manipulated the extent to which the postevent questionnaire overlapped with the witnessed event. Across two experiments, overlap in narrative content, narrative structure, or environmental context was not found to increase suggestibility effects, even though the manipulation did have other memory effects (e.g., it improved cued recall of the actual source of the suggestions, Experiment 2). These findings suggest that understanding the interaction between the structure and content of the objective context in which misinformation is encountered and various remembering contexts (e.g., recognition vs. recall) is important for advancing our understanding of source confusion in an eyewitness situation.     

Odour and Proustian memory: reduction of context‐dependent forgetting and multiple forms of memory

In Experiment 1, the reintroduction of the same ambient odour (lemon or lavender) improved performance four weeks later in both free recall and recognition of a word list. This was a cross‐over design that allowed direct comparison between congruent and incongruent odour conditions. A further comparison with an additional group showed that memory was not improved by the presence of a different odour. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of two odour cues (lemon and lavender) in the same cross‐over design using three learning and memory tests: (1) free recall of a word list; (2) problem solving; and (3) spatial learning. While recall of the word list and spatial learning were best when the same odour was present at both learning and test, there was no such context‐dependent effect for the problem‐solving task. However, the presence of the lavender odour at test improved performance in the problem‐solving task, irrespective of the odour present at the first exposure. Thus although lavender had some effect on problem solving, we saw context‐dependent retrieval only in free recall and spatial learning. We discuss the implications of this dissociation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correlational analyses of explicit and implicit memory performance

Sixty-four subjects were administered two tests of explicit memory (selective recall and recognition) and four tests of implicit memory (identification in a perceptual clarification procedure, word-fragment completion, tachistoscopic identification, and anagram solution). Each test drew on a different subset of a long list of previously displayed words. Although the four implicit memory tests showed sizable priming effects, correlational and factor analyses showed striking dissociations. On the one hand, performance on the perceptual clarification procedure and word-completion tests were related to one another, as well as to recall and recognition. On the other hand, performance on tachistoscopic identification and anagram solution were related to one another, but not to the measures for the other tasks. A framework is proposed to reconcile these new results with current knowledge on the explicit/implicit memory distinction, based in particular on studies of amnesic subjects. It is argued that a small number of tasks, especially tachistoscopic identification, may serve as relatively uncontaminated and ubiquitous indicators of implicit memory. However, explicit remembering could affect performance in so-called implicit memory tasks that allow for a strategy of controlled selection of candidate responses from accumulating cues, in experimental conditions that make the explicit remembering of relevant events possible.     

Part‐set cuing of texts,scenes, and matrices

In four experiments, we extended the study of part‐set cuing to expository texts and pictorial scenes. In Experiment 1, recall of expository text was tested with and without part‐set cues in the same order as the original text; cues strongly impaired recall. Experiment 2 repeated Experiment 1 but used cues in random order and found significant but reduced impairment with cuing. Experiments 3 and 4 examined the part‐set cuing of objects presented in a scene or matrix and found virtually no effect of cuing. More objects were recalled from the scene than from the matrix, indicating that the scene's organization aided memory, but the cues did not assist recall. These results extend the domains in which part‐set cues have either impaired or failed to improve recall. Implications for education and eyewitness accounts are briefly considered.     

Eyewitness Memory for Typical and Atypical Weapons in Cognitive Context

The present research addressed eyewitness memory for weapons, specifically for a modern semi‐automatic pistol and an antique flintlock, in order to address the influence of weapon novelty on recall for the given weapon. Additionally, the effect of explanatory backstory was examined in the same context; respondents were given prior information, which was either consistent or inconsistent with the presence of the flintlock in the scene, in order to gauge the influence of appropriate or inappropriate explanatory cognitive context. Finally, the effects of these variables on line‐up identification of the ‘suspect’ holding the given weapon were addressed. The results showed that weapon type did not influence recall accuracy for given weapons, although explanatory backstory did have a significant effect here, as initially predicted. Both weapon type and explanatory backstory produced significant effects on weapon recall errors, with the exotic weapon and the more prosaic backstory producing larger numbers of mistakes. Neither of these variables was associated with significant differences in line‐up performance. These results indicate the importance of prior cognitive context, as well as the physical appearance of weapons, in a full understanding of eyewitness processing of scenes involving firearms. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of ongoing task context and target typicality on prospective memory performance: the importance of associative cueing

Two experiments examined whether prospective memory performance is influenced by contextual cues. In our automatic activation model, any information available at encoding and retrieval should aid recall of the prospective task. The first experiment demonstrated an effect of the ongoing task context; performance was better when information about the ongoing task present at retrieval was available at encoding. Performance was also improved by a strong association between the prospective memory target as it was presented at retrieval and the intention as it was encoded. Experiment 2 demonstrated boundary conditions of the ongoing task context effect, which implicate the association between the ongoing and prospective tasks formed at encoding as the source of the context effect. The results of this study are consistent with predictions based on automatic activation of intentions.     

Stability and consistency of children’s event recall

The purpose of the study was to investigate consistency of recall across different tasks of event recall (similar to eyewitness tasks) and stability of performance across two different events. Additionally, developmental differences in consistency and stability were explored. 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children were subsequently shown two different events (videos) and were questioned about each event in two separate interviews. For both videos, performance levels in free recall, unbiased cued recall, and suggestibility were at similar levels, with older children generally outperforming younger children. As to intertask consistency of recall, there were significant correlations between correct free recall and correct unbiased cued recall but not between correct free recall and yielding to suggestive questions. All three measures of eyewitness performance showed significant group stability (test-retest correlations) across the two interviews, regardless of age. However, individual stability (lability) was lower, which points to moderate individual differences in stability across the two interviews. The findings are discussed in terms of underlying cognitive skills and the problem of predicting a single child’s memory performance in real cases of eyewitness testimony.     

Effects of ongoing task context and target typicality on prospective memory performance: The importance of associative cueing

Two experiments examined whether prospective memory performance is influenced by contextual cues. In our automatic activation model, any information available at encoding and retrieval should aid recall of the prospective task. The first experiment demonstrated an effect of the ongoing task context; performance was better when information about the ongoing task present at retrieval was available at encoding. Performance was also improved by a strong association between the prospective memory target as it was presented at retrieval and the intention as it was encoded. Experiment 2 demonstrated boundary conditions of the ongoing task context effect, which implicate the association between the ongoing and prospective tasks formed at encoding as the source of the context effect. The results of this study are consistent with predictions based on automatic activation of intentions.     

Social influence and children's event recall and suggestibility

The present study sheds light on interactions between cognitive and social factors affecting children's memory performance and suggestibility in event recall tasks. We examined 251 children, aged 8, 9 and 10 years, and applied a well-known paradigm from social psychology, that is, the social influence of misleading questions was experimentally manipulated through the presence and answering behaviour of an adult confederate. Children's answers about the content of a previously watched film to misleading questions, their accurate statements in their subsequent free recall, as well as performance in a recognition test were assessed. The design also included two control conditions, one in which children answered misleading questions without an adult confederate, and a second one in which no misleading interview was administered but only free recall and recognition. The results document large recall and suggestibility differences between the conditions. Participants of the strong social influence condition answered more conformably to misleading questions and showed a larger effect of memory contagion in recognition. Moreover, there were strong age-related increases in the ability to rely on one's own recollection rather than parroting the confederate's answers. Strong social influence also differentially affected the occurrence of false statements in free recall and errors in the recognition test depending on the children's age.     

Lexical and semantic search in cued recall, fragment completion, perceptual identification, and recognition

Search processes in word-stem cued recall, fragment completion, perceptual identification, and recognition are contrasted. These retention tests involve letters as cues, but the lexical characteristics of these cues vary considerably. In word-stem cued recall, ending letters are presented as recall cues for studied targets (e.g., ONEY as a cue for HONEY). In fragment completion, the test cues consist of letters and spaces (e.g., HO__Y); in perceptual identification, they consist of letter features that survive the mask; and in recognition, they consist of all the letters of the studied word (e.g., HONEY). These differences in retention tests and lexical characteristics were evaluated by manipulating three variables with known effects in cued recall: (a) the presence of study context words emphasizing lexical information, (b) lexical set size corresponding to the number of words that fit the letter cue, and (c) meaning set size corresponding to the number of meaningful associates linked to the studied targets. The results indicated that (a) the presence of study contexts emphasizing lexical information reduced accuracy and response time equally in all tasks, (b) larger lexical set sizes reduced accuracy and response time in all tasks except recognition, and (c) larger meaning set size reduced accuracy in cued recall but not in the other tasks. Lexical search appears to be a significant component process in word-stem cued recall, fragment completion, and identification. Searching through meaning-related concepts encoded during study is a significant component process only in cued recall.     

Crime Type,Perceived Stereotypicality,and Memory Biases: A Contextual Model of Eyewitness Identification

The fallibility of eyewitness identifications is well documented. Nevertheless, research has yet to assess the possibility that the type of crime committed systematically influences who eyewitnesses mistakenly identify. We address this oversight by presenting a contextual model of eyewitness identification (CMEI). The CMEI asserts that discrete crimes automatically activate distinct stereotypes about a perpetrator's appearance. Depending on the congruence between these stereotypes and the perpetrator's actual appearance, eyewitnesses will remember the perpetrator as appearing more (or less) representative of his or her group (i.e., higher or lower on perceived stereotypicality). Estimator and system variables are posited to affect identifications at different stages of the identification process. The literatures on stereotype activation, perceived stereotypicality, and stereotype‐consistent memory biases are reviewed to support the CMEI. Our conceptual integration provides a model of eyewitness identification that explains when mistaken identifications are likely to occur and who they are likely to affect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.