Assessing autobiographical memory: the web-based autobiographical Implicit Association Test

Autobiographical Implicit Association Test and eye movements: fixations topography enables detection of autobiographical memories

Introduction

Autobiographical memory is the capacity to recollect memories of personally experienced events. The detection of such memories plays a key role in criminal trials. Among behavioral memory-detection methods, the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) has gained popularity for its flexibility and suitability for forensic applications. The aIAT is a reaction time-based methodology aiming to assess whether information about an event is encoded in the respondent's mind. Here, we introduced the eye-D index, a measure based on the topography of fixations while performing the aIAT, as an additional measure to detect autobiographical memories covertly.

Methods

In this study, participants were involved in a mock-crime experiment in which they could act as Guilty or Innocent. One week later all participants underwent the aIAT combined with eye-tracking to investigate the presence of the crime-related memory.

Results

Guilty participants showed a higher number of fixations towards the category labels in the block in which true sentences shared the same response key with crime-related sentences, as compared to the block in which true sentences were paired with sentences describing an alternative version. Innocent participants showed the opposite pattern. This unbalanced allocation of attention to the category labels was quantified by the eye-D index and was found to be highly correlated to the standard aIAT-D index.

Discussion

This suggests that more fixations to the category labels could indicate increased cognitive load and monitoring of response conflicts. These preliminary results highlight eye-tracking as a tool to detect autobiographical memories covertly while performing the aIAT.

Two Cases of Malingered Crime-Related Amnesia

Amnesia is a frequent claim in major crimes, and it is estimated that the complete or partial absence of memory following a crime ranges from 25% to 50% of total cases. Although some cases may constitute a genuine form of amnesia, due to organic-neurological defects or psychological causes, and possibly combined with a dissociative or repressive coping style after an extreme experience, malingering is still fairly common in offenders. Therefore, one of the main goals in medico-legal proceedings is to find methods to determine the credibility of crime-related amnesia. At present, a number of lie and memory detection techniques can assist the forensic assessment of the reliability of declarative proof, and have been devised and improved over the past century: for example, modern polygraphs, event-related potentials, thermal imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging, kinematic, and facial analysis. Other ad hoc psychological tests, such as the so-called Symptom Validity Test (SVT) and Performance Validity Test (PVT), as well as the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT), can also be used. To date, however, there is little evidence or case reports that document their real usefulness in forensic practice. Here, we report two cases of crime-related amnesia, whereby both defendants, who were found guilty of homicide, appeared to exhibit dissociative amnesia but where the application of SVTs, PVTs, and aIAT detected a malingered amnesia.

Best research practices for using the Implicit Association Test

Interest in unintended discrimination that can result from implicit attitudes and stereotypes (implicit biases) has stimulated many research investigations. Much of this research has used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure association strengths that are presumed to underlie implicit biases. It had been more than a decade since the last published treatment of recommended best practices for research using IAT measures. After an initial draft by the first author, and continuing through three subsequent drafts, the 22 authors and 14 commenters contributed extensively to refining the selection and description of recommendation-worthy research practices. Individual judgments of agreement or disagreement were provided by 29 of the 36 authors and commenters. Of the 21 recommended practices for conducting research with IAT measures presented in this article, all but two were endorsed by 90% or more of those who felt knowledgeable enough to express agreement or disagreement; only 4% of the totality of judgments expressed disagreement. For two practices that were retained despite more than two judgments of disagreement (four for one, five for the other), the bases for those disagreements are described in presenting the recommendations. The article additionally provides recommendations for how to report procedures of IAT measures in empirical articles.

Testing a potential alternative to traditional identification procedures: Reaction time-based concealed information test does not work for lineups with cooperative witnesses

Direct eyewitness identification is widely used, but prone to error. We tested the validity of indirect eyewitness identification decisions using the reaction time-based concealed information test (CIT) for assessing cooperative eyewitnesses' face memory as an alternative to traditional lineup procedures. In a series of five experiments, a total of 401 mock eyewitnesses watched one of 11 different stimulus events that depicted a breach of law. Eyewitness identifications in the CIT were derived from longer reaction times as compared to well-matched foil faces not encountered before. Across the five experiments, the weighted mean effect size d was 0.14 (95% CI 0.08-0.19). The reaction time-based CIT seems unsuited for testing cooperative eyewitnesses' memory for faces. The careful matching of the faces required for a fair lineup or the lack of intent to deceive may have hampered the diagnosticity of the reaction time-based CIT.

Methodological improvements of the association-based concealed information test

The Association-Based Concealed Information Test (A-CIT) is a deception-detection method, in which participants categorize personally relevant items (e.g., their own surnames) as probes together with categorically similar but irrelevant items (e.g., others' surnames) by one key press A, while categorizing self-referring "inducer" items (e.g., "MINE" or "MY NAME") with an alternative key press B, thereby establishing an association between self-relatedness and B and an incongruence between the self-relatedness of probes and A (Lukács, Gula, Szegedi-Hallgató, & Csifcsák, 2017). The A-CIT's sensitivity to concealed information is reflected in an incongruence effect: slower responses to probes than to other surnames. To increase the relevance of categories, between trials of the original A-CIT, category-to-response mappings switched or repeated unpredictably. This, however, could have diminished incongruence effects, as the response labels were presented in the corners of the display, veering spatial attention away from the items at screen center. In the present online study (n = 294), we therefore tested two improved versions of the A-CIT that do not require spatial attention shifts to and from peripheral labels. One improved version presents per trial only one category label at screen center and requires comparison to the currently presented item. The other improved version is based on the Identification Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (ID-EAST), in which item categorization switches (or repeats) based on colors versus meanings of the central items. Both new versions outperformed the original A-CIT.

The language of lies: a preregistered direct replication of Suchotzki and Gamer (2018; Experiment 2)

Is lying in a different language easier or more difficult? The Emotional Distance and the Cognitive Load hypothesis give competing answers. Suchotzki and Gamer measured the time native German speakers needed to initiate honest and deceptive answers to German and English questions. Lie-truth differences in RTs were much smaller for the foreign compared to the native language. In our preregistered replication study in native Dutch speakers, we found that lie-truth differences in RTs were moderately smaller when participants were tested in English than when tested in Dutch. These findings indicate that people struggle with quickly retrieving the truth in another language, and that foreign language use may diminish lie-truth differences.