Technology and eyewitness memory: evaluating the efficacy of a novel digital cued recall tool

ABSTRACT

In order to capture and preserve eyewitness memory, psychologists have developed cued recall tools that witnesses can fill out immediately after a critical incident. This study assesses the efficacy of a novel tool, ‘iWitnessed’. iWitnessed is a smartphone application that elicits information from witnesses about the event using a guided recall procedure. Naïve undergraduate participants (N = 72) witnessed a staged theft and were then randomly allocated to one of three immediate recall conditions: no recall (control), free recall, or iWitnessed. One week later all participants returned to the lab and were interviewed about the theft they had witnessed. The results showed that iWitnessed increased the amount of correct information reported in the participants’ immediate accounts (Hedge’s g = 1.26) without compromising overall accuracy. However, iWitnessed did not improve delayed recall relative to the free recall and control groups.

This research shows that novel technological advancements can be used to capture and preserve accurate and detailed eyewitness accounts.

KEYWORDS:

• Eyewitness memory
• immediate recall tool
• eyewitness testimony
• Self-Administered Interview
• eyewitness recall

Acknowledgement

We are very grateful to the volunteers in the Forensic Psychology Lab who helped make this research possible. In particular, we would like to thank Michael Spoelma for his dedication and commitment as a confederate and Timothy Dutton for doing this as well as coding data for inter-rater reliability.

Disclosure statement

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

Conflicts of interest

The authors have no real or potentially perceived conflict(s) of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationships with other organisations or companies that may inappropriately impact or influence the research and interpretation of the findings. iWitnessed is freely available to the public and the authors have no commercial interests.

Data availability

Anonymized raw data is available upon request (please contact the second author). However, the data cannot be made available for public access, as participants did not provide informed consent for it to be distributed in this manner.

Additional information

Funding

The development and assessment of iWitnessed was funded by a philanthropic donation and the source has remained anonymous to the authors of this paper. The funding source had no other role other than financial support.