Disentangling the Evidence: Mock Jurors, Inadmissible Testimony and Integrative Encoding

Research investigating intentional forgetting has found that disregarding information may be more difficult when the to-be-forgotten material is strongly related to information that must be retained. The present study investigated whether mock jurors' capacity to disregard inadmissible testimony would be impaired when the same witness presented admissible evidence. Mock jurors were presented with a murder trial summary in which an incriminating letter was presented, after which an incriminating wiretap was presented and ruled admissible, presented but ruled inadmissible due to unreliability, or not presented at all. The critical items were presented by the same witness or different witnesses. Results indicated that participants successfully disregarded the inadmissible wiretap regardless of whether the same witness presented the letter. The findings are discussed in terms of jurors' organisation of information and the salience of source cues.