Vredeveldt Annelies, Hildebrandt Alieke, van Koppen Peter J
a Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law , VU University Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands.
Memory. 2016;24(5):669-82. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2015.1042884. Epub 2015 Aug 24.
Crimes are often observed by multiple witnesses. Research shows that witnesses can contaminate each other's memory, but potential benefits of co-witness discussion have not yet been investigated. We examined whether witnesses can help each other remember, or prune each other's errors. In a research design with high ecological validity, attendees of a theatre play were interviewed approximately one week later about a violent scene in the play. The couples that signed up for our study had known each other for 31 years on average. Participants were first interviewed individually and then took part in a collaborative interview. We also included a control condition in which participants took part in two individual interviews. Collaboration did not help witnesses to remember more about the scene, but collaborative pairs made significantly fewer errors than nominal pairs. Further, quantitative and qualitative analyses of retrieval strategies during the discussion revealed that couples who actively acknowledged, repeated, rephrased, and elaborated upon each other's statements remembered significantly more information overall. Taken together, our findings suggest that, under certain circumstances, discussion between witnesses is not such a bad idea after all.
犯罪行为往往有多名证人目睹。研究表明，证人之间会相互干扰彼此的记忆，但共同证人讨论的潜在益处尚未得到研究。我们研究了证人之间是否能够互相帮助回忆，或者消除彼此的错误记忆。在一个具有高度生态效度的研究设计中，约一周后，我们对一场戏剧演出的观众进行访谈，询问他们关于剧中一个暴力场景的情况。报名参加我们研究的夫妻平均相识31年。参与者首先接受单独访谈，然后进行合作访谈。我们还设置了一个对照条件，即参与者参加两次单独访谈。合作并没有帮助证人更多地回忆起场景内容，但合作的两人组比名义上的两人组犯的错误明显更少。此外，对讨论过程中检索策略的定量和定性分析表明，积极认可、重复、重新表述并详细阐述彼此陈述的夫妻总体上记住的信息要多得多。综上所述，我们的研究结果表明，在某些情况下，证人之间的讨论毕竟并非是个坏主意。
