The effects of repeatedly recalling a traumatic event on eyewitness memory and suggestibility

ABSTRACT

The aims of this study were to examine the effects of repeatedly recalling a traumatic event on recall performance and eyewitness suggestibility. We also investigated whether these effects were moderated by the type of details recalled and the completeness of retrieval. Participants watched a video depicting a fatal car accident and were randomly allocated to one of four conditions in which they: (1) repeatedly recalled the traumatic (central) details of the event only (trauma-focused); (2) repeatedly recalled the non-traumatic (peripheral) details of the event only (non-trauma focused); (3) repeatedly recalled the entire video (complete); or (4) did not recall the video at all (no-recall control). Results indicated that repeated complete recall was beneficial for memory retention of the entire traumatic event and that, in general, trauma-related (central) post-event information (PEI) was less likely to be reported than trauma-unrelated (peripheral) PEI. It was also found that repeated trauma-focused recall increased trauma-related confabulations. These results not only illustrate the value of repeated complete recall to best preserve the integrity of eyewitness memory, but, perhaps more critically, warn of the dangers of repeatedly questioning witnesses specifically about the central or traumatic details of an event.

KEYWORDS:

• Repeated recall
• misinformation effect
• eyewitness memory
• trauma

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Rebecca Pinkus for all her help in advising us with the statistics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted to assess and compare memory performance of the three repeated recall conditions (trauma, non-trauma and complete) after each recall test. The results found were consistent with those that have been reported in many previous studies examining eyewitness memory. More specifically, testing and misinformation effects were found for each repeated recall condition. These results will not be reported or further discussed as these analyses do not provide further insight in to the aims of the present study.

2 Two participants who were initially randomly allocated to the trauma-focused recall condition were included as part of the complete recall group in the final analyses as they wrote about the entire video in all recall sessions. Although six participants expressed awareness that the written statement contained misleading information, there were no differences in the final output when they were excluded from the analysis. Thus, these six participants were still included in the final analysis to increase power.