Investigating the ease-of-retrieval effect in an eyewitness context

ABSTRACT

The way in which individuals think about their own cognitive processes plays an important role in various domains. When eyewitnesses assess their confidence in identification decisions, they could be influenced by how easily relevant information comes to mind. This ease-of-retrieval effect has a robust influence on people's cognitions in a variety of contexts (e.g., attitudes), but it has not yet been applied to eyewitness decisions. In three studies, we explored whether the ease with which eyewitnesses recall certain memorial information influenced their identification confidence assessments and related testimony-relevant judgements (e.g., perceived quality of view). We manipulated the number of reasons participants gave to justify their identification (Study 1; N = 343), and also the number of instances they provided of a weak or strong memory (Studies 2a & 2b; Ns = 350 & 312, respectively). Across the three studies, ease-of-retrieval did not affect eyewitnesses’ confidence or other testimony-relevant judgements. We then tried – and failed – to replicate Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991. Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 195–202. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.195) original ease-of-retrieval finding (Study 3; N = 661). In three of the four studies, ease-of-retrieval had the expected effect on participants’ perceived task difficulty; however, frequentist and Bayesian testing showed no evidence for an effect on confidence or assertiveness ratings.

KEYWORDS:

• Ease-of-retrieval
• eyewitness memory
• identification confidence
• lineups
• recognition memory

Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship to the first author. Authors contribution: Roy Groncki: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Project Administration, Software, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, and Writing – Review & Editing; Jennifer L. Beaudry: Conceptualization, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Code Validation, Supervision, and Writing – Review & Editing; James D. Sauer: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 TM & © 2008 Entertainment Rights Distribution Limited. All rights reserved.

2 We attempted to calculate the 90% CI for ${\eta }_p^2$ using Wuensch (2009), but the computation consistently provided the nonsensical interval of [0.00, 0.00]. Therefore, we do not provide a CI for this value.

3 Schwarz et al. (1991) did not specify the exact sample size for each group; they reported that there were 9–10 participants per group.

4 We thank a reviewer for raising this point.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship to the first author.