RETRIEVAL-INDUCED FORGETTING IN AN EYEWITNESS-MEMORY PARADIGM

The potential impact of repeated questioning of a witness was examined . Subjects were shown slides depicting the aftermath of a theft and su bsequently were asked several times to recall selected details of what they saw. Previous experiments employing simple verbal materials have demonstrated that information addressed by questioning becomes more r ecallable in the future than it would have been without such retrieval practice, but other information, especially that bearing a categorica l similarity to the practiced items, becomes less recallable. Such pos itive and negative effects appeared in subjects' later recall of crime -scene details in the present experiment. These results have an import ant implication for legal practice: Repeated interrogation of a witnes s can modify the witness's memory-enhancing the recall of certain deta ils while inducing the forgetting of other details-even when no misinf ormation is contained or implied in the questioning.