K. Pezdek et J. Greene, TESTING EYEWITNESS MEMORY - DEVELOPING A MEASURE THAT IS MORE RESISTANT TO SUGGESTIBILITY, Law and human behavior, 17(3), 1993, pp. 361-369
This study identifies a memory-testing procedure that is relatively re
sistant to the documented effects of suggestibility on eyewitness memo
ry. Most studies on suggestibility have used a verbal recognition memo
ry test in which the alternative test items are sentences, each to be
verified as true or false regarding an originally viewed visual sequen
ce. In this study, participants were tested with either the verbal rec
ognition memory test typical of studies demonstrating the eyewitness s
uggestibility effect or a visual recognition memory test. The typical
eyewitness suggestibility effect resulted in the verbal test condition
. However, with the visual recognition memory test, the hit rates did
not significantly differ between the control and misled conditions. Th
us, in testing memory for a visual event, a visual recognition memory
test is more resistant to the influences of suggestibility than is a v
erbal test. These results suggest that the original item is preserved
in memory, not overwritten by the misleading information. Accordingly,
with a visual recognition memory test, the original information is mo
re likely to be recovered with a visual recognition memory test than w
ith a verbal one.