Reducing misinformation effects in older adults with cognitive interview mnemonics

Protecting against misinformation: Evaluating the effectiveness of three techniques to reduce memory conformity

The memory conformity effect occurs when people witness a given incident (e.g. a crime) then talk to each other about it, and the statement of one person affects the memory account of the other person with respect to this incident. The aim of this article is to improve the quality of witness testimony by verifying the effectiveness of three methods that aim to reduce memory conformity effect: (1) an extended warning against misinformation; (2) a method based on information about memory functioning and its fallibility and (3) a method consisting in motivating participants to resist influence and demonstrating their individual vulnerability to it. In the presented experiment, the innovative MORI technique was used to study the memory conformity effect. This technique allows a pair of participants to sit beside each other, look at the same screen and see a different version of the same criminal event. In the next stages, the subjects are asked to answer a series of questions about different details, thereby introducing mutual misinformation; then, the participants perform an individual memory test. In the experimental conditions, this test was preceded by one of the three tested methods in each group, with the aim of determining their effectiveness in reducing memory conformity. It turns out that the implementation of an extended warning against misinformation eliminated the memory conformity effect, while the application of two other methods led to a reduction (but not complete elimination) of the studied phenomenon.

Mediators and Moderators of Reinforced Self-Affirmation as a Method for Reducing the Memory Misinformation Effect

The misinformation effect occurs when an eyewitness includes information in his or her account that is incongruent with the event he or she witnessed, and stems from being exposed to incorrect external sources. This is a serious threat to the quality of witness testimony and to the correctness of decisions reached by courts. However, few methods have been developed to reduce the vulnerability of witnesses to misinformation. This article presents such a method, namely, reinforced self-affirmation (RSA), which, by increasing memory confidence of witnesses, makes them less inclined to rely on external sources of information and more on their own memory. The effectiveness of this method was confirmed in three experiments. It was also found that memory confidence, but not general self-confidence, is a mediator of the impact of RSA on misinformation effect (ME), and that contingent self-esteem and feedback acceptance, but not sense of self-efficacy or general self-esteem, are moderators of this impact. It is concluded that RSA may be a promising basis for constructing methods, which can be used by forensic psychologists in real forensic settings.

Interrogative suggestibility in the elderly

Interrogative suggestibility (IS) describes the extent to which an individual behavioral response is affected by messages communicated during formal questioning within a closed social interaction. The present study aimed at improving knowledge about IS in the elderly (aged 65 years and older), in particular about its association with both emotive/affective and cognitive variables. The sample (N = 172) was divided into three groups on the basis of age: late adult (aged 55-64, N = 59), young elderly (aged 65-74, N = 63), and elderly (aged 75 and older, N = 50). Cognitive (i.e., Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test-2, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test), emotive/affective (i.e., Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Penn State Worry Questionnaire) and suggestibility measures (i.e., Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale-2) were administered. In order to identify differences and associations between groups in IS, cognitive and emotive/affective variables, ANOVAs tests and Pearson's correlations were run. Furthermore, moderation analyses and hierarchical regression were set to determine whether age, cognitive and emotive/affective variables predicted IS components (i.e., Yield and Shift). Finally, machine learning models were developed to highlight the best strategy for classifying elderly subjects with high suggestibility. The results corroborated the significant link between IS and age, showing that elderly participants had the worst performance on all suggestibility indexes. Age was also the most important predictor of both Yield and Shift. Results also confirmed the important role of non-verbal intelligence and memory impairment in explaining IS dimensions, showing that these associations were stronger in young elderly and elderly groups. Implications about interrogative procedures with older adults were discussed.

Améliorer le rappel des individus âgés de 60 ans et plus à l’aide de l’entretien cognitif : une revue et méta-analyse

Les aînés sont souvent perçus comme des témoins peu fiables, une perception qui est partiellement appuyée par des travaux qui démontrent que les témoignages des aînés tendent à être moins détaillés que ceux produits par des témoins plus jeunes. L’entretien cognitif est une technique d’interrogatoire qui repose sur des stratégies de rappel issues des sciences cognitives. Plusieurs travaux récents démontrent l’efficacité de l’entretien cognitif auprès d’échantillons de jeunes adultes. Toutefois, la recherche portant sur l’utilisation de l’entretien cognitif auprès de témoins âgés est récente et en développement. Le présent article effectue une synthèse des travaux portant sur l’efficacité de l’entretien cognitif auprès d’aînés ainsi qu’une méta-analyse des données publiées à ce jour. La méta-analyse comprend sept études traitant des performances de participants aînés et comparant l’efficacité de l’entretien cognitif à celle obtenue en employant d’autres techniques de rappel. Les résultats démontrent une augmentation du nombre de détails corrects rappelés quand l’entretien cognitif est utilisé. Cependant, les données actuelles ne permettent pas de conclusion valide pour le nombre de détails incorrects ou sur l’exactitude du rappel. La discussion présente les forces et faiblesses des travaux publiés à ce jour de manière à favoriser le développement futur de ce domaine de recherche.

Improving intoxicated witness recall with the Enhanced Cognitive Interview

RATIONALE

Witnesses and victims typically provide the central leads in police investigations, yet statistics from past research indicates in many instances these individuals are intoxicated.

OBJECTIVES

To date, however, no research has looked at how best to interview such witnesses to maximise the amount of accurate information they recall.

METHODS

In the present research, whilst on a night out, participants watched a videoed theft whilst either sober or moderately (MBAC = 0.05%) or severely (MBAC = 0.14%) intoxicated. A week later, in a different location, participants were interviewed using either the Enhanced Cognitive (ECI) or Structured Interview.

RESULTS

The ECI was found to improve the recall accuracy and completeness of witness accounts across all three drinking conditions. However, no significant interaction was indicated between alcohol and interview condition.

CONCLUSIONS

The study findings are discussed in terms of their real-world value in aiding police officers to elicit as complete and as accurate an account as possible from intoxicated witnesses.

Misinformation Effect in Aging: A New Light with Equivalence Testing

OBJECTIVES

To better characterize the formation of false memories in older adults, we conducted a study using a French adaptation of the misinformation paradigm from Loftus, Levidow, and Duensing (1992). We aimed to show higher false memory production in older than in younger adults.

METHOD

One hundred and four younger adults (18-30 years) and 104 older adults (70-95 years) took part in the study. Participants were presented with a misinformation paradigm through the viewing of a short video followed by a questionnaire containing misinformation about the film. After a short delay (45 min), they performed a recognition task.

RESULTS

Contrary to our hypothesis, the results analyzed with a Welch t test did not reveal a greater misinformation effect in older adults than in younger adults. Results were reanalyzed using the equivalence test which indicated that younger and older adults are statistically equivalent and not statistically different.

DISCUSSION

The equivalence test helped to clarify the contradictory results of the literature. Furthermore, such results show the interest to reconsider misinformation effect in aging.

Adaptive constructive processes: An episodic specificity induction impacts false recall in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm

Numerous studies indicate that an episodic specificity induction (ESI)-brief training in recollecting the details of a past experience-enhances performance on subsequent tasks that rely on episodic retrieval, including autobiographical memory, imagination, problem solving, and creative thinking. In 5 experiments, we examined whether these benefits of the ESI extend to reducing susceptibility to false memory, or whether they are accompanied by a cost in the form of increased susceptibility to false memory. To assess how ESI impacts false memory generation, we used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, a reliable procedure for generating false memories. When an ESI was administered after DRM list presentation and just before a free recall test, rates of false recall for critical lures were significantly enhanced relative to a control induction. These findings support the hypothesis that ESI operates to boost recollection of illusory episodic details associated with critical lures in the DRM, and suggest that constructive rather than reproductive episodic retrieval processes support the wide-ranging effects of ESI on a range of cognitive tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

An experimental examination of the effects of alcohol consumption and exposure to misleading postevent information on remembering a hypothetical rape scenario

We experimentally examined the effects of alcohol consumption and exposure to misleading postevent information on memory for a hypothetical interactive rape scenario. We used a 2 beverage (alcohol vs. tonic water) × 2 expectancy (told alcohol vs. told tonic) factorial design. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to conditions. They consumed alcohol (mean blood alcohol content = 0.06%) or tonic water before engaging in the scenario. Alcohol expectancy was controlled by telling participants they were consuming alcohol or tonic water alone, irrespective of the actual beverage they were consuming. Approximately a week later, participants were exposed to a misleading postevent narrative and then recalled the scenario and took a recognition test. Participants who were told that they had consumed alcohol rather than tonic reported fewer correct details, but they were no more likely to report incorrect or misleading information. The confidence-accuracy relationship for control and misled items was similar across groups, and there was some evidence that metacognitive discrimination was better for participants who were told that they had consumed alcohol compared with those told they had tonic water. Implications for interviewing rape victims are discussed.

Evaluating suggestibility to additive and contradictory misinformation following explicit error detection in younger and older adults

In 2 experiments, we assessed age-related suggestibility to additive and contradictory misinformation (i.e., remembering of false details from an external source). After reading a fictional story, participants answered questions containing misleading details that were either additive (misleading details that supplemented an original event) or contradictory (errors that changed original details). On a final test, suggestibility was greater for additive than contradictory misinformation, and older adults endorsed fewer false contradictory details than younger adults. To mitigate suggestibility in Experiment 2, participants were warned about potential errors, instructed to detect errors, or instructed to detect errors after exposure to examples of additive and contradictory details. Again, suggestibility to additive misinformation was greater than contradictory, and older adults endorsed less contradictory misinformation. Only after detection instructions with misinformation examples were younger adults able to reduce contradictory misinformation effects and reduced these effects to the level of older adults. Additive misinformation however, was immune to all warning and detection instructions. Thus, older adults were less susceptible to contradictory misinformation errors, and younger adults could match this misinformation rate when warning/detection instructions were strong. (PsycINFO Database Record

The neuroscience of face processing and identification in eyewitnesses and offenders

Humans are experts in face perception. We are better able to distinguish between the differences of faces and their components than between any other kind of objects. Several studies investigating the underlying neural networks provided evidence for deviated face processing in criminal individuals, although results are often confounded by accompanying mental or addiction disorders. On the other hand, face processing in non-criminal healthy persons can be of high juridical interest in cases of witnessing a felony and afterward identifying a culprit. Memory and therefore recognition of a person can be affected by many parameters and thus become distorted. But also face processing itself is modulated by different factors like facial characteristics, degree of familiarity, and emotional relation. These factors make the comparison of different cases, as well as the transfer of laboratory results to real live settings very challenging. Several neuroimaging studies have been published in recent years and some progress was made connecting certain brain activation patterns with the correct recognition of an individual. However, there is still a long way to go before brain imaging can make a reliable contribution to court procedures.

Constructive episodic simulation: dissociable effects of a specificity induction on remembering, imagining, and describing in young and older adults

According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis (Schacter & Addis, 2007), both remembered past and imagined future events rely heavily on episodic memory. An alternative hypothesis is that observed similarities between remembering and imagining reflect the influence of broader factors such as descriptive ability, narrative style, or inhibitory control. We attempted to distinguish between these 2 hypotheses by examining the impact of an episodic specificity induction on memory, imagination, and picture description in young and older adults. In Experiment 1, participants received the specificity induction or a control induction prior to the memory, imagination, and description tasks. Older adults provided fewer internal (i.e., episodic) and more external (i.e., semantic) details than young adults across the 3 tasks irrespective of induction. Critically, however, the specificity induction selectively increased internal but not external details for memory and imagination in both age groups compared with the control induction. By contrast, the induction did not affect internal (or external) details for picture description. Experiment 2 replicated these results in young adults using a different control induction. Our findings point to a dissociation between episodic processes involved in memory and imagination and nonepisodic processes involved in picture description.

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview: Towards a Better Use and Understanding of This Procedure

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview is accepted as one of the most successful techniques for enhancing witness recollection. This type of interview has been studied all over the world (eg, Europe or the USA) and is used by police officers in many different countries (eg, the UK and New Zealand). Nonetheless, it is essential for police officers to understand how, and when, to properly apply this interview. Therefore, we examined the underlying psychological processes involved in this interview, and what research can tells us about the situations and purposes that can benefit from applying it.

Do older adults change their eyewitness reports when re-questioned?

OBJECTIVES

This study examined how older adults responded to different types of pressure to change their responses when questioned a second time about their memory for a crime.

METHOD

After watching a video of a crime and answering questions about remembered details, younger (18-22 years) and older adults (64-91 years) were either given negative feedback about their memory performance, were told that most people their age did poorly on the memory test (stereotype threat), or were simply asked to answer the questions again. This was done regardless of their actual accuracy, and the questions were then repeated.

RESULTS

Results showed that both younger and older adults changed significantly more responses following negative feedback and changed more responses on misleading than on nonleading questions. Among older adults, as age increased, accuracy decreased and rate of response change increased. People were moderately confident overall about both their correct and incorrect responses.

DISCUSSION

These results highlight the dangers of repeatedly questioning older witnesses with misleading questions and suggest that the responses that are changed may come to be remembered confidently-regardless of whether they are correct or incorrect.

Drawing to remember: external support of older adults' eyewitness performance

Although healthy aging is accompanied by a general decline in memory functioning, environmental support at retrieval can improve older adults' (+65 years) episodic remembering. Despite those over the age of 65 years representing a growing proportion of the population, few environmental retrieval support methods have been empirically evaluated for use with older witnesses and victims of crime. Here, the efficacy of a novel retrieval technique, the Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context, is compared with a standard Mental Reinstatement of Context and a no support control (Control). Fifty-one participants witnessed an unexpected live event, and 48 hours later were interviewed using one of three aforementioned techniques. In line with predictions emanating from cognitive theories of aging and the environmental support hypothesis, participants in the Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context condition recalled significantly more correct information and fewer inaccurate items. The Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context technique appears to scaffold memory retrieval in an age-appropriate manner during a post-event interview, possibly by encouraging more effortful retrieval and reducing dual-task load. As such, this procedure offers an effective alternative to current approaches, adding to the toolbox of techniques available to forensic and other interviewers.