Judging the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies using retrieval effort cues

• Published in: Applied cognitive psychology 2021-09, Vol.35 (5), p.1224-1235
• Main Authors: Gustafsson, Philip U., Lindholm, Torun, Jönsson, Fredrik U.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Cues; Detectives; Difficulty Level; Evaluative Thinking; eyewitness accuracy; eyewitness memory; eyewitness testimony; Identification; judgment accuracy; Lay People; Performance Factors; Police; Psychology; psykologi; Recall (Psychology); Retrieval; retrieval effort cues; Testimony; Transcripts (Written Records); Witnesses
• ISSN: 0888-4080; 1099-0720; 1099-0720
• DOI: 10.1002/acp.3854

Summary Recent research has shown that incorrect statements in eyewitness testimonies contain more cues to effortful memory retrieval than correct statements. In two experiments, we attempted to improve judgments of testimony accuracy by informing participants about these effort cues. Participants read eyewitness testimony transcripts and judged statement accuracy. Performance was above chance in both experiments, but there was only a significant effect of the effort‐cue instruction in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, we also compared judgment accuracy between police detectives, police students and laypersons, and found no significant difference, in contrast to previous studies. Moreover, the current study corroborates previous findings that (a) judging testimony accuracy is a difficult task and (b) people spontaneously rely on effort cues to some extent when judging accuracy. However, a complete reliance on effort cues showed substantially better performance than relying on one's own judgments skills at best, and offered equal performance at worst.