Telling a good story: The effects of memory retrieval and context processing on eyewitness suggestibility

Would you believe an intoxicated witness? The impact of witness alcohol intoxication status on credibility judgments and suggestibility

Memory conformity may occur when a person’s belief in another’s memory report outweighs their belief in their own. Witnesses might be less likely to believe and therefore take on false information from intoxicated co-witnesses, due to the common belief that alcohol impairs memory performance. This paper presents an online study in which participants (n = 281) watched a video of a mock crime taking place outside a pub that included a witness either visibly consuming wine or a soft drink. Participants then read a statement from the witness that varied in the number of false details it contained before being asked to recall the crime. We found that the intoxicated witness was regarded as significantly less credible, but participants were not less likely to report misinformation from them. This suggests that intoxication status impacts one’s perception of how credible a source is, but not one’s ability to reject false suggestions from this source. Our findings reinforce the importance of minimizing co-witness discussion prior to interview, and not to assume that people automatically (correctly or not) discount information provided by intoxicated co-witnesses.

Protective effects of testing across misinformation formats in the household scene paradigm

Many studies have demonstrated retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES), in which taking an initial recall test after witnessing an event increases suggestibility to subsequent misinformation introduced via a narrative. Recently, however, initial testing has been found to have a protective effect against misinformation introduced via cued-recall questions. We examined whether misinformation format (narrative vs. cued-recall questions) yields a similar dissociation in a paradigm that, to date, has consistently yielded a protective effect of testing (PET). After studying photos of household scenes (e.g., kitchen), some participants took an initial recall test. After a 48-hr delay, items not presented in the scenes (e.g., knives/plates) were suggested either via narrative or questions. Regardless of the misinformation format, we found a PET on both initial-test-conditionalised free recall and source-monitoring tests. However, initial testing also yielded memory costs, such that suggested items reported on the initial test were likely to persist on a final recall test. Thus, initial testing can protect against suggestibility, but can also precipitate memory errors when intrusions emerge on an initial test.