OVERCOMING MISINFORMATION EFFECTS IN EYEWITNESS MEMORY - EFFECTS OF ENCODING TIME AND EVENT CUES

Eyewitness memory is often distorted when misleading information is pr esented to subjects after encoding. Three experiments explored ways to overcome these misinformation effects. In Experiment 1, subjects view ed slides of a robbery, at a rate of four or seven seconds per slide. Five minutes later subjects were given a recognition test with few (1- 3) or numerous (6-13) event cues. Providing numerous retrieval cues im proved overall performance, but did not reduce the effects of misinfor mation. With week-long delays (Experiment 2) numerous retrieval cues d id eliminate misinformation effects, but only when subjects viewed sli des at the slower rate (seven seconds per slide). Experiment 3 essenti ally replicated this pattern, using a modified test to eliminate any b iasing effects of distracters. Given adequate encoding and numerous re trieval cues, misinformation effects were eliminated, suggesting that under some conditions misinformation makes event memory inaccessible, but not unavailable.