The impact of note taking style and note availability at retrieval on mock jurors’ recall and recognition of trial information

Abstract

Jurors forget critical trial information and what they do recall can be inaccurate. Jurors’ recall of trial information can be enhanced by permitting them to take notes during a trial onto blank sheets of paper (henceforth called freestyle note taking). A recent innovation is the trial-ordered-notebook (TON) for jurors, which is a notebook containing headings outlining the trial proceedings and which has space beneath each heading for notes. In a direct comparison, TON note takers recalled more trial information than freestyle note takers. This study investigated whether or not note taking improves recall as a result of enhanced encoding or as a result of note access at retrieval. To assess this, mock jurors watched and freely recalled a trial video with one-fifth taking no notes, two-fifths taking freestyle notes and two-fifths using TONs. During retrieval, half of the freestyle and TON note takers could access their notes. Note taking enhanced recall, with the freestyle note takers and TON note takers without note access performing equally as well. Note taking therefore enhances encoding. Recall was greatest for the TON note takers with note access, suggesting a retrieval enhancement unique to this condition. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• Juror
• Jury
• Note taking
• Memory
• Recall
• Recognition

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Christine L. Ruva for providing us with a copy of the trial footage used in the study and Mary E. Pritchard for providing us with a copy of the trial transcript and the 24 questions relating to the trial information. We also thank Qian Su, Jack Briggs and Jane L. Sayers for assistance with data collection and data scoring.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Completeness is determined by dividing the number of correct details a participant recalls by the possible number of correct details they could have recalled. For example, if there are 100 pieces of evidence presented during a trial and a person correctly recalls 50 of these, then this is 50% completeness. Accuracy is calculated by dividing the number correct details a participant recalls by the total number of details they recalled (including errors). For example, if person recalled 50 pieces of trial information correctly and makes 10 errors, then this is 83% accuracy.

² Research from the educational psychology literature suggests that being given a fixed period to time to review notes prior to a memory test can enhance recall of lectures (see Kobayashi, 2006, for a meta-analysis). Note reviewing is suggested to help learners consolidate noted information and relearn forgotten information (DiVesta & Gray, 1972). Reflecting the experience of real jurors, participants in ForsterLee et al.’s (1994) juror recall study were not provided with a set period of time to review their notes prior to the memory test. The benefits of note reviewing on juror recall are currently being explored by the lead author (CT).

³ For several of the questionnaire analyses, the degrees of freedom are lower than anticipated. This is a result of participants making no response to the questions.