Eyewitness testimony: Effects of source of arousal on memory, source-monitoring, and metamemory judgments

This study investigated the effects of emotional and exercise-induced physi ological arousal on memory recall, retrospective source-monitoring ability, and two prospective metamemory judgments: judgments of learning (JOLs) and judgments of source (JOS). Participants were exposed to three emotional ar ousal conditions (low, medium, and high emotionally arousing video segments and written passages), and three physiological arousal conditions (low, me dium, and high levels of exercise, neutral video material, and neutral writ ten passages). After each condition, participants made predictive JOLs abou t item recall and JOSs about source-monitoring ability at a future time. On e week later, cued recall and source-monitoring accuracy of central and per ipheral details was tested. Results showed that medium levels of emotional arousal improved cued recall of both central and peripheral details, while high levels of arousal impaired recall of central details. Physiological ar ousal did not influence any of the dependent variables. JOLs and JOSs were reasonably predictive of recall and source-monitoring accuracy, although pa tterns of over- and under-estimation were evident. The results are discusse d in terms of Easterbrook's cue-utilisation hypothesis, the Yerkes-Dodson l aw, source-monitoring theory, and Koriat's cue-utilisation theory.