Remembering with a friend or a stranger: comparing acquainted and unacquainted pairs in collaborative eyewitness interviews

Figures & data

Table 1. Retrieval strategies during collaborative interviews, coded according to the coding scheme proposed by Vredeveldt and Van Koppen (2018). Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) for the frequency of each strategy per interview in the two collaborative conditions.

Strategy	Description and examples	Acquainted		Unacquainted
		M	SD	M	SD
Successful cue	Cuing attempt (e.g., “What did the car look like?”) that is followed by retrieval of information by the partner (e.g., “Black”).	8.57	4.79	9.10	2.81
Failed cue	Cuing attempt (e.g., “What did the car look like?”) that is not followed by retrieval of information by the partner (e.g., “No clue”).	5.38	3.09	6.45	4.32
Acknowledgement	Indicating support for a partner's statement, such as “Yes”, “Yeah”, “Hm hm”, or “That's right”.	63.95	27.00	73.70	26.55
Correction	Correcting a partner's statement (e.g., “No, it was blue”), or questioning its accuracy (e.g., “That's not right”).	12.90	9.49	9.85	6.72
Elaboration	Building on a partner's statement by providing additional information, either countable (i.e., a new detail as classified in the content coding scheme) or non-countable (e.g., “it looked suspicious”).	55.33	22.66	56.25	21.51
Explanation	Explaining one's own statement to the partner (e.g., “It was the same colour as my car”).	10.90	6.44	9.50	4.36
Repetition	Repeating a partner's statement verbatim.	14.48	8.43	15.10	9.81
Restatement	Reformulating a partner's statement without changing the content (e.g., rephrasing “big car” to “large automobile”).	5.38	4.10	6.05	4.22
Renewed remembering	Indicating that a partner's statement triggers a memory (e.g., “Now I remember it again” or “Oh right!”).	3.86	2.37	4.90	3.23
Positive references to relationship^a	Positive statement about the partner's or the pair's ability (e.g., “Well done” or “We are a good team”).	0.81	1.12	0.35	0.67
Negative references to relationship^a	Negative statement about the partner's or the pair's ability (e.g., “I can't believe you don't remember that” or “We clearly didn't pay much attention”).	0.24	0.54	0.00	0.00
Role division	Dividing or organising the retrieval task (e.g., “You start” or “I’ll jump in”).	1.76	1.89	1.80	2.50
Checking accuracy	Checking with the partner whether particular details are correct (e.g., “It was black, right?”).	7.52	4.80	5.60	2.85
Total number of strategies		191.10	71.86	198.65	62.13

Note: ^a Not included in analyses because it occurred less than once per interview on average.

Figure 1. Mean number of non-redundant correct details reported in each interview by nominal, acquainted and unacquainted pairs. Bars for Interview 1 reflect baseline performance; bars for Interview 2 and 3 reflect the addition of new correct information not previously mentioned by either pair member in a previous interview. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 2. Mean number of non-redundant incorrect details reported in each interview by nominal, acquainted and unacquainted pairs. Bars for Interview 1 reflect baseline performance; bars for Interview 2 and 3 reflect the addition of new incorrect information not previously mentioned by either pair member in a previous interview. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.

Vredeveldt, A., & Van Koppen, P. J. (2018). Recounting a common experience: On the effectiveness of instructing eyewitness pairs. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1–11. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00284

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