Marsh, E. J., Tversky, B, & Hutson, M., (2005). How eyewitnesses talk about events: Implications for memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 531 – 544.

 

Clearly, issues affecting the memories of eyewitnesses are important.  One such issue is the account of the witnessed event.  Witnesses generally have to retell their story multiple times, often over long delays.  Additionally, the situations in which the witnesses retell their memories may differ.  The information of focus may change, for example, if the witness is discussing the crime with a police officer versus a therapist.  The researchers hypothesize that the way a witness focuses on the information may affect future retrieval, similar to the effects post event information has on eyewitness memory.  More specifically, the researchers wish to examine the effects that an emotional or informational perspective have on the memory of the eyewitness.

Two possibilities were put forth. First, the “Emotional Retelling as Deep Encoding hypothesis” predicts that emotional retellings will facilitate future retrieval. Second, the “Emotional Retelling as Selective hypothesis” predicts that emotional retellings will have effects specific to the emotional components of memory.

 

Methods.

77 participants watched a 7 minute clip from the film The Professional.  The clip was chosen for its graphic violence and emotionally charged material.  After the clip participants completed a mood questionnaire.  The participants were assigned to one of three retelling conditions: the factual focus condition, the affective focus condition, or a no-talk control condition.  Participants in the two experimental conditions spoke to a video camera about the film for a maximum of seven minutes.  Participants in the factual focus condition were instructed to talk about the specific events of the film in chronological order.  Participants in the affective focus condition were instructed to talk about their emotional reactions to the movie clip.  Folks in the control condition participated in a distractor task in lieu of talking to the camera.

Next, the memory of all participants was tested in a series of five tasks.  First, participants performed a recall test for memory of the film’s perpetrators.  Second, participants were given 15 minutes to recall as much about the clip as possible. Third, participants repeated the emotion questionnaire as a retrospective measure. Fourth, participant answered open-ended questions about the film clip.  Finally, participants picked a perpetrator from a lineup based on a presented picture.  The participants were to pick which perpetrator was responsible for the actions in the picture.  Any participant that felt negative emotion had the opportunity to watch the movie When Harry Met Sally to elevate mood.

 

Results

Retellings (Video)

Overall, participants in the factual focus condition showed greater emphasis on perceptual information and more focus on others rather than themselves.  Participants in the affect focus condition emphasized themselves and their feeling and reaction to the clip (Table 1).

 

Memory Tests:

Perpetrator Descriptions

There were no differences between the conditional groups.

 

Free Recall (Table 2)

The retelling conditions led to greater recall of events than did the control condition.  The proportion of major errors differed across condition, with participants showing the greatest proportion of major errors, followed by participants in the factual conditions and participants in the control condition respectively.  Using the same analysis that was used on the video revealed no difference in the inclusion of perceptual and emotional events.  However, participants in the affect focus condition wrote longer responses on average.  Further analysis showed that folks in the affect focus condition included more subjective material and more language indicative of cognitive mechanisms than participants from the factual focus condition.  Finally, participants in the affect condition were more likely to attempt to quote the clip than participants from the other conditions.

 

Memory for Emotion (Figure 1)

Difference scores were computed based on the initial emotion rating and the retrospective ratings.  Overall, participants remembered their negative emotions better than their positive emotions.  Participants in the affect focus condition were better at recalling emotions than participants from either other condition.

 

Cued Recall

There were no differences in the responses between the conditions.

 

Picture Recognition

Again, no differences were found between conditions on this task.

 

General Discussion

Overall the data provide more support for the “Emotional Retelling as Selective hypothesis.”  This hypothesis suggests that emotional focus creates a schema utilized for organization of the witnessed information.  This schema could affect later retrieval.  Most troubling, this difference in focus had the strongest effects in the free recall condition, the condition closest to what would happen in a real investigation.  Clearly witnesses need not be exposed to misleading information after the fact.  Simply recounting the facts can have dramatic effects on eyewitness memory.

Important Legal Disclaimer: The preceding are articles we read together in the Lampinen Lab Spring 2006 false memory reading group. By clicking on the button next to the article you can see the summary of that article. The summary was prepared by the student presenting that article and it is of course the case that the views expressed in the summary do not necessarily represent the views of the reading group as a whole, Dr. Lampinen, the Lampinen Lab, Hugo's, the University of Arkansas, the Razorback Football or Basketball teams (although we're not sure about cross country), people living down the street from us, Bob Dylan, Jack Fate, our extended families, or anyone else for that matter except for the student who wrote the summary (and they don't necessarily believe what they wrote either).