The effects of immediate recall on eyewitness accuracy and susceptibility to misinformation

Abstract

Eyewitnesses can be influenced by misinformation that they encounter when discussing the event with a co-witness. Some studies have found that an immediate recall of the event can inoculate eyewitnesses against such misinformation; others have found that it increases susceptibility to misinformation. These different findings may be due to methodological factors, so the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of three different recall conditions. An immediate cued recall, free recall or no recall was given to 88 participants after they watched a crime video. They then discussed the video with a confederate who introduced correct and incorrect information about the video. Accuracy and amount of recall was tested one week later. It was found that the immediate-recall questionnaire did not make participants more susceptible to misinformation in comparison to no-recall participants, indeed the data trended the other way, suggesting that immediate-recall inoculated participants against misinformation. Furthermore, the provision of correct post-event information increased memory accuracy, especially after immediate recall.

Keywords:

• eyewitness memory
• memory conformity
• social contagion of memory
• self-administered interview
• misinformation effect

Notes

1. This interaction was not significant on the final free-recall questionnaire (p = 0.66).

2. On the final free-recall questionnaire the contrast between cued recall and free recall was also significant (p < 0.05), suggesting that cued-recall participants had higher accurate recall.

3. On the final free-recall questionnaire there were no differences between the conditions on confabulations for correct post-event information (all ps > 0.50).

4. It is not appropriate to analyse these values using a 2 × (3) ANOVA because for each participant the values must sum to 1.0.

5. On the final free-recall questionnaire, no significant differences or contrasts were found (all ps > 0.083).