Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Learning & Memory · 1978 · 331 citations · 0 references
Cognitive ScienceVisual CognitionVisual ReasoningSemantic ProcessingSemantic IntegrationMemoryPsycholinguisticsCognitionSocial SciencesSemantic Memory
The study examined how post‑event information affects witnesses’ memory of an accident. One thousand two hundred forty‑two participants viewed slides of a single auto‑pedestrian crash and were then given consistent, misleading, or irrelevant post‑event information. Misleading post‑event information reduced recognition accuracy—particularly when presented just before the final test—and these effects cannot be explained by demand characteristics, indicating that both consistent and misleading information become integrated into witnesses’ memories.
A total of 1,242 subjects, in five experiments plus a pilot study, saw a series of slides depicting a single auto-pedestrian accident. The purpose of these experiments was to investigate how information supplied after an event influences a witness's memory for that event. Subjects were exposed to either consistent, misleading, or irrelevant information after the accident event. Misleading information produced less accurate responding on both a yes-no and a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test. Further, misleading information had a larger impact if introduced just prior to a final test rather than immediately after the initial event. The effects of misleading information cannot be accounted for by a simple demand-characteristics explanation. Overall, the results suggest that information to which a witness is exposed after an event, whether that information is consistent or misleading, is integrated into the witness's memory of the event.