Improving Time Estimation in Witness Memory

The present study sought to determine whether witness memory for duration could be improved. In three studies, we examined the effects of unpacking (breaking an event into its component parts), anchoring (supplying participants with a reference duration), and summation (summing component estimates). Participants watched a video-recorded mock crime and provided duration estimates for components of the crime (e.g., casing the car, unlocking the door, etc.) and for the total crime. Results indicate that bias in estimated duration was less for the sum of the parts than it was for the overall duration estimate. Further, the sum of the individual parts did not equal the total estimate, even though all estimates were given in sequence. Summing the component parts could be a more successful intervention than anchoring or unpacking and is easy to employ with witnesses.

A successful and unsuccessful replication of William Stern's eyewitness research

Research on age and sex differences in eyewitness memory has attracted the attention of applied cognitive psychologists for almost a century. The present work is a repetition of Stern's classic research (1903-1904) with 35 boys and 30 girls in primary school. Stern's original claims concerning the superior observational skills of older subjects were fully confirmed. However, in sharp contrast, the present investigation did not yield significant differences in either accuracy of recall or resistance to incorrect information between boys and girls.