Can Implicit Associations Distinguish True and False Eyewitness Memory? Development and Preliminary Testing of the IATe

Analysing Deception in Witness Memory through Linguistic Styles in Spontaneous Language

The act of lying and its detection have raised interest in many fields, from the legal system to our daily lives. Considering that testimonies are commonly based on linguistic parameters, natural language processing, a research field concerned with programming computers to process and analyse natural language texts or speech, is a topic of interest on this front. This study aimed to examine the linguistic styles of simulated deception and true testimonies collected with the aim of studying witness memory. Study participants were asked to act as a witness of a crime by retelling the story they had just read. Cognitive interviewing techniques were used to collect testimony under two conditions: truth and simulated deception. A sample of 48 participants volunteered to participate in the study. Analyses of the linguistic indicators and content were carried out. Specifically, we performed a comparison of testimonies of the same participant by condition to analyse the variation between (i) lexical and (ii) linguistic features and (iii) content and speech characteristics (disfluencies) depending on the narrative condition. Concerning lexical properties, adjectives were the most-varying grammatical category between truthful and deceptive testimonies. Furthermore, in the linguistic analysis, we observed that truthful testimonies were generally longer than deceptive ones in terms of the number of words and sentences and also characterised by more articulated sentence structures, and these differences were also statistically significant. Regarding the analysis of the content, cognitive criteria (details) and admitting lack of memory were more present in truthful statements. By providing an objective measure, these results are of interest in developing NLP tools for assessing the credibility of testimonies in forensics.

Can implicit measures detect source information in crime-related amnesia?

Participants who are asked to simulate amnesia for a mock crime have a weaker memory for this event when they have to give up their role as a feigner, than those who are not asked to feign memory loss. According to the source monitoring framework (SMF), this memory-undermining effect of simulating amnesia for a crime would be due to misattribution of the right source of information. However, we know that the content of self-generated information (e.g., feigned version of the crime) might be preserved and recognised over time as a result of elaborative cognitive processing. In the present study, we aimed to contrast these two explanations. We showed participants a mock crime video and we instructed them to either feign amnesia (simulators) or confess the mock crime (confessors). Next, a free recall memory test was administered. After one week, participants were asked to perform a personalised source monitoring task using the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT). As predicted, we found that simulators were able to discriminate the content of their self-generated feigned story of the crime from the original version. Moreover, simulators were quicker than confessors at the aIAT task. Practical and theoretical implications of our results are discussed.

Measuring the flashbulb-like nature of memories for private events: the flashbulb memory checklist

What do we remember following an emotionally charged event? The assessment of memory characteristics for an emotional event represents one of the most challenging issues in the domain of autobiographical memory. Literature of flashbulb memories (FBMs) provides a crucial contribution on this issue: Following an emotional and unexpected public event, people remember not only central details of the episode, but also irrelevant, peripheral and idiosyncratic details of the reception context in which they learned of the news. The present study was set up to assess the factorial structure (samples 1 and 2) and convergent validity (sample 2) of an FBM checklist, an instrument designed to measure Flashbulb-like features of memories for emotional private events. Factorial analyses account for an oblique two-factor solution - FBM Specificity and Confidence - while correlational analyses support the convergent validity of this instrument. Practical implications are discussed, especially for the credibility assessment of witnesses of emotional events in forensic settings.