Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
PLoS One. 2022 Sep 7;17(9):e0273455. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273455. eCollection 2022.
An important task for the law enforcement is to assess the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies. Recent research show that indicators of effortful memory retrieval, such as pausing and hedging (e.g. "I think", "maybe"), are more common in incorrect recall. However, a limitation in these studies is that participants are interviewed shortly after witnessing an event, as opposed to after greater retention intervals. We set out to mitigate this shortcoming by investigating the retrieval effort-accuracy relationship over time. In this study, participants watched a staged crime and were interviewed directly afterwards, and two weeks later. Half the participants also carried out a repetition task during the two-week retention interval. Results showed that the retrieval-effort cues Delays and Hedges predicted accuracy at both sessions, including after repetition. We also measured confidence, and found that confidence also predicted accuracy over time, although repetition led to increased confidence for incorrect memories. Moreover, retrieval-effort cues partially mediated between accuracy and confidence.
执法的一个重要任务是评估目击证词的准确性。最近的研究表明，努力记忆检索的指标，如停顿和回避（例如“我认为”、“也许”），在不正确的回忆中更为常见。然而，这些研究的一个局限性是，参与者是在目击事件后不久接受采访的，而不是在更长的保留间隔后。我们通过研究随着时间的推移检索努力与准确性的关系来弥补这一不足。在这项研究中，参与者观看了一起 staged crime，并在随后立即、两周后进行了采访。一半的参与者还在两周的保留间隔期间进行了重复任务。结果表明，检索努力线索延迟和回避在两次会议上都预测了准确性，包括重复后。我们还测量了信心，发现信心也随着时间的推移预测了准确性，尽管重复会导致错误记忆的信心增加。此外，检索努力线索在准确性和信心之间部分中介。
