Selective retrieval and induced forgetting in eyewitness memory

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 21: 1157–1172 (2007) Published online 18 December 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1323

Selective Retrieval and Induced Forgetting in Eyewitness Memory MALEN MIGUELES* and ELVIRA GARCIÁ-BAJOS University of the Basque Country, San Sebastiań, Spain

SUMMARY This study analyses retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) in eyewitness memory. Selective retrieval of specific information about an event could cause eyewitnesses to forget related contents. Based on a video of a man being robbed while withdrawing money from a cash machine, we examined the effects of partial retrieval on the most relevant aspects of the event: actions (Experiment 1) and offender characteristics (Experiment 2), in both immediate and long-term recall (24 hours). In both experiments long-term recall was a replica of immediate recall for correct information as well as errors. The effects of partial retrieval practice were also repeated in long-term recall. Conventional RIF was found for offender characteristics but selective retrieval of the actions of the event produced no comparable effect. It is assumed that the organisation and integration of the actions of the event protected them from RIF. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The very act of remembering, of trying to retrieve from memory information relevant to a specific purpose, can cause us to forget related contents (e.g. Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994; Anderson & McCulloch, 1999; Anderson & Neely, 1996; MacLeod & Macrae, 2001). However, rather than being a negative aspect of memory, the act of forgetting is an indication of proper memory function. In order to retrieve information effectively, we need to rely on a mechanism that can resolve interference from memories that compete for recall (Anderson & Bjork, 1994; Bjork, 1989), a mechanism that blocks or inhibits the retrieval of competing items. A procedure widely used to explore forgetting triggered by inhibitory processes is the retrieval practice paradigm (Anderson et al., 1994). The classic paradigm has four phases: study, retrieval practice, distractor task and final recall task. In the encoding phase participants are given lists of category-exemplar pairs (e.g. fruit-orange, drink-gin). Next, they practice retrieving half of the studied exemplars from half of the categories, prompted by cues to facilitate recall (e.g. fruit-or___). Following a distractor task, participants are given the names of the categories (e.g. fruit, drinks) and asked to recall all of the studied elements. Recall of three types of elements is assessed: practiced elements (e.g. orange, Rpþ items), unpracticed elements from the practiced category (e.g. apple, Rp items) and unpracticed elements from the categories without retrieval practice (e.g. gin, Nrp elements) which serve as a baseline. This paradigm

*Correspondence to: Malen Migueles, Facultad de Psicologıá, Universidad del Paı´s Vasco, Avda. Tolosa 70, 20018 San Sebastiań, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]

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makes it possible to study two phenomena: the facilitation of recall for practiced items (Rpþ > Nrp) and the inhibition of unpracticed items from the practiced category (Rp < Nrp). The logic underlying this procedure is that in order for selective retrieval to be successful, the interference from other potential memories must be resolved, and suppress or block their retrieval (see Levy & Anderson, 2002, for a quick review). Although retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) allows us to remember the information we need (Anderson et al., 1994; Anderson & Spellman, 1995), activating this adaptive mechanism (Anderson & Bjork, 1994; Bjork, 1989) can have important consequences when recalling an event. When eyewitnesses to burglaries, muggings, assaults or accidents recall events, they are influenced by the same cognitive processes involved in any memory task (MacLeod, 2002). Thus, the selective retrieval of specific information about the event could cause eyewitnesses to temporarily forget related aspects. In any event, when witnesses are interviewed repeatedly by police officers, lawyers, judges or friends, or when they simply think about the event, retrieval tends to be partial. These retrieval attempts can therefore lead to forgetting other information relevant to the case. Following this logic, Shaw, Bjork and Handal (1995), and MacLeod (2002) analysed RIF in the context of eyewitness memory, adapting the procedure designed by Anderson et al. (1994) using semantic categories. They showed participants slides of two blocks of information associated with two types of objects: college schoolbooks and college sweatshirts present at the scene of a burglary (Shaw et al., 1995); belongings stolen from two homes (MacLeod, 2002, Experiment 1); and the characteristics of two women involved in bogus money collections (MacLeod, 2002, Experiment 2). They then practiced half of the items in one of the blocks of information by a mock interrogation, and used the other block as a baseline. Like in any other conventional study on RIF, they also analysed the facilitation of recall for practiced items (Rpþ > Nrp) and the inhibition of unpracticed items from the practiced category (Rp < Nrp). Results showed that asking questions about specific aspects of an event can modify eyewitness memory, increasing recall of certain details while causing forgetting of others. This proved true even when both effects were measured against a control group, which preformed no retrieval practice. More recently Saunders and MacLeod (2006) worked with verbal material. Participants were instructed to read two narratives containing information about two separate burglaries. In both cases, they were presented with the circumstances surrounding the burglaries together with a list of the stolen objects and a sentence describing from where in the house each item had been stolen. In an independent cue recall task, selective retrieval of half of the stolen objects from one of the houses resulted in inhibition and forgetting objects from the practiced category (Experiment 1). In addition, this inhibition extended to objects stolen from the unpracticed house, which served as a baseline (Nrp), when they were semantically related to both practiced items (Rpþ, cross-category effects) and unpracticed items (Rp, second-order effects). These findings show that inhibition emerges to reduce interference with related material at retrieval. Migueles and Garcıá-Bajos (2006) also worked with verbal material to examine whether the impact of inhibitory processes is reduced by the activation of previous knowledge. Following a normative study designed to determine the actions of a mugging schema, they presented high-typicality actions (listed by more than 25% of the participants) as verified facts from the event, and low-typicality actions (listed by less than 5% of the participants) as non-verified facts. They found RIF in the selective retrieval of low-typicality actions but not in the partial retrieval of high-typicality actions. The organisation of the actions into the schema protected the high-typicality actions from inhibition. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 21: 1157–1172 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/acp

Induced forgetting in eyewitness memory

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However, in none of the earlier studies did participants actually eyewitness the event. Before seeing the study material they were given a verbal description of the facts and asked to imagine they had been involved (Shaw et al., 1995), or that they had witnessed the event (MacLeod, 2002, Experiment 2), or that they were the first police officers at the scene of the crime (MacLeod, 2002, Experiment 1), or that the investigation had uncovered a series of verified and non-verified facts (Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2006). Our aim is to analyse RIF for the most relevant aspects of an event: the actions and characteristics of the offenders involved. For our purposes we used a video to show a realistic portrayal of a person who is robbed while withdrawing money from a cash machine at a shopping centre. When a witness is interviewed to obtain information, it is relevant to know what actually occurred, information that lies in the actions that capture the sequence of facts and the gist of the event, and to determine offender characteristics. In both real-life events (e.g. Woolnough & MacLeod, 2001; Yuille & Cutshall, 1986) and laboratory studies (e.g. Clifford & Scott, 1978; Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 1999), eyewitnesses accurately recall and recognise the actions involved in an event. However, the memory of offenders is more incomplete, the descriptions are scarcely distinctive, inaccurate and containing few details (Christianson & Hu¨binette, 1993; Sporer, 1996; Tollestrup, Turtle, & Yuille, 1994; Yuille & Cutshall, 1986). A limited number of studies have examined memory for actions and people involved in a single event. Woolnough and MacLeod (2001) analysed the statements of victims and eyewitnesses of real criminal events recorded on closed-circuit television. They assessed actions, objects, descriptions of offenders and verbal aspects, and found that 93.3% of all of the verifiable information was associated with actions. Yuille and Cutshall (1986) analysed statements made by witnesses who had seen a hold-up at a gun shop and examined actions, people and objects. Their findings showed that 56% of the information provided was related to actions and only 26% to people. Moreover, the percentage of correct information was higher for actions (82%) than for people (74%). And in a laboratory study Migueles and Garcıá-Bajos (2004) presented a video of a bank robbery; participants completing a recognition task also had statistically higher proportion of hits for the robbers’ actions (0.81) than for their characteristics (0.71). As pointed out by Fisher and Geiselman (1992), in real situations, statements revolve around offender actions and characteristics. Therefore, ascertaining the impact of selective retrieval of a part of this information on eyewitness memory, and determining whether forgetting caused by inhibitory processes similarly affects such different aspects as the actions of an event and offender characteristics have theoretical and applied relevance. Very few studies have examined RIF for actions. On the one hand, activities implemented by the participants themselves (Koutstaal, Schacter, Johnson, & Galluccio, 1999, Experiment 1), facts expressed through propositions (Anderson & Bell, 2001) or low-typicality actions of a robbery (Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2006) have shown that the selective retrieval of part of the material produced competition and inhibition of non-practiced facts. On the other hand, events are made up of organised actions. It is known that when study material can be integrated or organised, either spontaneously as a learning strategy (Anderson & Bell, 2001; Anderson & McCulloch, 1999) or by explicit instruction (Anderson & McCulloch, 1999; Macrae & Roseveare, 2002; Smith & Hunt, 2000), inhibitory effects are diminished. Interference is also reduced when learned facts, such as the actions of an event, are causally and temporally linked (Myers, O’Brien, Balota, & Toyofuku, 1984). Another aspect that can help organise and integrate the actions of an event is the activation of our previous knowledge about facts that take place when a crime is committed (see Garcıá-Bajos & Migueles, 2003; Holst & Pezdek, 1992; List, 1986; Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


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Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2004; Tuckey & Brewer, 2003). These knowledge schemata are made up of highly interrelated elements that are particular resistant to inhibitory processes (Anderson & McCulloch, 1999; Dunn & Spellman, 2003; Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2006). One of the aims of this study is to determine the real impact of the selective retrieval of actions involved in a robbery. To retrieve the specific characteristics of the perpetrator of a crime, we may need to block out other characteristics that compete for access to the conscience but which are not the ones we need at the time of retrieval practice. Using the retrieval practice paradigm, MacLeod (2002) showed slides of two women (a blonde and a brunette) making a bogus money collection. He observed that the selective retrieval of half of the characteristics of one of the women led to inhibition of her remaining characteristics. Analysing these inhibitory processes with a real event presented on video is a further aim of this study. Lastly, we are interested in determining whether RIF effects remain after a 24-hour delay. Using the standard methodology and exemplars from taxonomic categories, it was found that RIF persists at least 20 minutes after retrieval practice (Anderson et al., 1994). Furthermore, MacLeod and Macrae (2001) used personality traits from two people, and found the standard RIF in the immediate evaluation but the effect failed to emerge when the final recall task was delayed 24 hours. However, findings by Storm, Bjork, Bjork and Nestojko (in press), who used category exemplars and cued final recall, showed RIF at both 10 minutes and when the recall test was repeated a week later. The authors suggest that RIF after 1 week might have been due to a kind of carryover effect. Currently there is little information available on the duration of RIF, and the results that do exist appear to be contradictory. Nevertheless, as has been pointed out (Anderson, 2003; Anderson & Bjork, 1994), explaining the duration of RIF with different procedures and materials can help to clarify the mechanisms underlying RIF.

EXPERIMENT 1: PARTIAL RETRIEVAL OF THE ACTIONS OF AN EVENT Instead of presenting the event verbally or by showing participants slides (MacLeod, 2002; Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2006; Saunders & MacLeod, 2006; Shaw et al., 1995), we selected a video sequence that realistically summarised a person being robbed while withdrawing money from a cash machine at a shopping centre. The video included some 20 actions, all of which were central and clearly defined. This made it possible for us to list them and divide them into two groups, selecting alternate actions to examine partial retrieval effects in final recall. Method Participants and design Fifty-six Psychology students from the University of the Basque Country participated in this experiment, 50 women and 6 men ranging in age from 19 and 44 years (M ¼ 22.45 years; SD ¼ 7.36). The sample was divided into two groups of 28 participants, the retrieval practice experimental group and a non-retrieval practice control group. The experiment had a 2 (Retrieval practice conditions: practice, control) 2 (Retention interval: immediate, day) mixed factorial design with repeated measures on the retention interval factor. Facilitation (Rpþ > Control) and inhibition (Rp < Control) effects were analysed by between-participants comparisons. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.



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Material The event used in this study was the robbery of a person withdrawing money from a cash machine. The video sequence lasted 50 seconds and was projected onto a 2.5 2 m screen. The first part shows a woman walking out of a photograph shop and down the aisle of the shopping centre looking at her pictures. Then we see two men, one blonde and the other dark-haired, watching a young man as he withdraws money from a cash machine. They walk up to him, steal his money and flee. The young man shouts, which catches the attention of a security guard who chases the two robbers down the aisle. They run down the steps of an escalator and get away. The actions of the event were determined through a previous pilot study (n ¼ 14). Maintaining the organisation and contents of the actions listed by the participants, 21 actions were selected, covering the sequence of events from beginning to end (Appendix A). The actions were defined as the clearly apparent execution of verbal and non-verbal behaviours. The first and last two were used to avoid possible effects of primacy and recency. The generic phrase A young man gets money from a cash machine was used to present the event and as an example for the retrieval practice task. The 16 remaining actions comprised the experimental material. For the retrieval practice the actions were divided into two sets of eight, A and B, each representing a synthesis of the development of the event. Procedure Participants performed the experiment in small groups. All of them were told to pay close attention to the event because afterwards they would be evaluated. After watching the video, all of the experimental group members did two retrieval practice tasks with half of the actions from the event. Half of the participants worked with set A actions and the other half with set B. A cued-recall task was used to ensure the success in the first retrieval practice task (e.g. A young man gets money from a c_____), followed by questions on the same contents (e.g. What is the young man doing?), simulating the kind of questions that the police would ask. These tasks lasted approximately 3 minutes. Afterwards they were given 5 minutes to solve 50 anagrams. Participants in the non-retrieval practice control group spent 8 minutes solving anagrams after watching the video. Finally, all of the participants performed a free recall task immediately and 24 hours later, writing all of the actions from the event on a piece of paper numbered from 1 to 20. They worked at their own speed, taking about 8 minutes to complete the task. Results and discussion Retrieval practice and final recall performance were scored by two judges, who came to total agreement, assigning one point for every recalled action, whether correct or incorrect. Correction was rigorous, and generic actions that did not include specific relevant details were not scored. In the final recall only the 16 experimental actions were assessed (see Appendix A), excluding the two primacy actions, the two recency actions and the phrase A young man gets money from a cash machine, used to present the event and as an example for the retrieval practice task. In the retrieval practice phase there were no differences between the percentage of actions recalled by the experimental group participants who worked with the half of the actions included in set A (M ¼ 97.77%; SD ¼ 3.96) and those who practiced the other half, or set B (M ¼ 93.30%; SD ¼ 6.77), t(26) ¼ 1.81, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.11. Overall retrieval practice Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


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performance was higher than 95% (M ¼ 95.53%; SD ¼ 6.77), thus ensuring that the participants adequately performed the retrieval practice tasks. In addition, performing the retrieval practice with set A or B had no effect on the final recall measures: Rpþ or Rp items, either immediately or the next day. The control group allowed us to compare the recall of actions in sets A and B without the effects of retrieval practice. There were no differences between the two groups of actions either immediately, t(27) ¼ 1.73, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.10, or the next day, t(27) ¼ 1.68, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.09, and although the overall recall performance of the control group was slightly higher for set B (M ¼ 0.59; SD ¼ 0.15) than set A (M ¼ 0.54; SD ¼ 0.10), the differences were not statistically significant, t(27) ¼ 1.98, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.13. Table 1 shows the proportion of recalled actions in the final recall task. Included are experimental group Rpþ practiced actions and Rp unpracticed actions, control group recall, and the effects of facilitation and inhibition both immediately and the next day. A mixed ANOVA 2 (Rpþ, Control) 2 (Immediate recall, next day) was used to analyse the facilitation effects, with repeated measures in the evaluation interval factor. Recall performance was better for practiced actions in the experimental group Rpþ than unpracticed actions in the Control group, F(1, 54) ¼ 35.62, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.39. The facilitation effect (Rpþ > Control) was found both immediately, t(54) ¼ 5.38, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.35, and the next day, t(54) ¼ 5.80, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.38. However, neither the interval factor nor interaction was significant (F < 1). To assess the possible negative effects of retrieval practice, a mixed ANOVA 2 (Rp, Control) 2 (Immediate recall, next day) was performed. The selective retrieval of part of the actions of the event did not produce inhibition (Rp < Control) of unpracticed actions in the experimental group compared to the control group, F(1, 54) ¼ 0.94, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.017, neither immediately, t(54) ¼ 1.12, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.02, nor the next day, t(54) ¼ 0.67, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.01. In this case we can be reasonably confident that the null effects are not due to lack of statistical power, because the differences between Rp and Control item recall performance would need to be at least 0.069 to have proven significant (a ¼ 0.05), and here the differences were smaller (Immediate, 0.04 and Day, 0.02; see Table 1). The interval factor and interaction (F < 1) were not significant. Moreover, there were no differences between immediate and next-day recall in any of the conditions (Rpþ, Rp, Control). Long-term recall showed a tendency to replicate immediate recall, paraphrasing the content and repeating the chronological order of the actions. This agreement between

Table 1. Mean proportion of recalled actions by retrieval practice conditions, and facilitation and inhibition effects Retrieval conditions Final recall Immediate Day

Rpþ 0.76 0.77

Rp 0.53 0.54

Control 0.57 0.56

Facilitation

Inhibition

(Rpþ) Control

(Rp) Control

0.19 0.21

0.04a 0.02a

Note: Rpþ ¼ practiced actions from the experimental group; Rp ¼ unpracticed actions from the experimental group; Control ¼ unpracticed actions from the control group. a n.s., not significant. p < 0.001. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.



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immediate and long-term recall, or repetition effect, appeared in Rpþ practiced actions (95.93%), Rp unpracticed actions (92.43%) and the control group (93.41%). Lastly, it is worth noting that the participants made only three mistakes when recalling the actions of the event. Although plausible or typical in such a situation (e.g. the man shouts: ‘Stop, thief!’), these actions had not actually taken place. Migueles and Garcıá-Bajos (2006) also found more high typicality than low typicality errors in the recall of verbal actions of a mugging script. In summary, three findings are noteworthy. In the first place, prior retrieval practice enhanced memory for reviewed actions. In this case, there was 20% better performance than the control group. Second, retrieval practice did not inhibit the recall of other actions of the event. And, third, 24-hour delayed recall was a replica of immediate recall in both the experimental and the control group. In all of the conditions (Rpþ, Rp, Control) participants repeated in the second recall session over 92% of the actions recalled in the first evaluation.

EXPERIMENT 2: PARTIAL RETRIEVAL OF OFFENDER CHARACTERISTICS The second experiment focuses on the characteristics of the offenders of the crime. Together with the actions of the event, this information is relevant to eyewitness memory insomuch as it can help police identify and apprehend the offenders. As two robbers were involved in the incident, we could have participants practice half of the characteristics of one of them in the retrieval practice task and use the characteristics of the unpracticed robber as a baseline. However, we considered that Nrp baseline recall might be biased because participants might try to reproduce the practiced aspects from the practiced man on the unpracticed man. For this reason a non-retrieval practice control group was used to study and prevent these possible effects. Regarding inhibition of offender characteristics, MacLeod (2002) extended the study of RIF to examine whether such effects were possible for the recall of meaningful stimuli, under conditions similar to those that might be expected under some eyewitnessing situations, such as descriptive details concerning two suspects of making door-by-door bogus money collections (Experiment 2). He found as important inhibitory effects as in the partial retrieval of electrical and non-electrical goods stolen from two houses (Experiment 1). What has yet to be determined is whether this is because of the difficulty in integrating a person’s physical characteristics into an organised representation, or because the person’s memory is updated (see Bjork, 1975) and modified (see Bjork, 1978) when retrieving part of the characteristics, thus losing many of the originally encoded elements, or if all of these aspects contribute to fomenting inhibitory effects. Even though in our experiment the participants saw the perpetrators of the crime and the unfolding of the event on video rather than slides like in the MacLeod study, we expected to found basically the same effects. Method Participants and design Sixty Psychology students from the University of the Basque Country, 49 women and 11 men ranging in age from 18 to 48 (M ¼ 22.55 years; SD ¼ 5.90) participated in the experiment. None of them had participated in Experiment 1. Two groups were formed: an Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


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experimental group with 32 participants who performed the retrieval practice tasks with half of one of the robber’s characteristics, and a control group consisting of 28 participants who did no retrieval practice. The experiment had a 3 (Retrieval practice conditions: Rpþ, Rp, Nrp) 2 (Retention interval: immediate, day) within-participants factorial design. In addition to the within-participants comparisons common in the retrieval practice paradigm, the control group made it possible to analyse facilitation (Rpþ > Control) and inhibition (Rp < Control) effects by between-participants comparisons. Material The same event was used as in the previous experiment. But instead of actions, this experiment took into account the two offenders’ characteristics most often mentioned in the earlier pilot study (n ¼ 14). The terms blond man and dark-haired man were used to identify the robbers because like in the MacLeod study (2002, Experiment 2), hair colour was the most outstanding feature. Twelve equivalent characteristics were taken into account for each of them: three global aspects (age, build and height), four facial features (shape of the face, hair length, hair style and beard), four clothing or shoe characteristics (colour and kind of top and bottom wear, and shoe type) and an accessory (see Appendix B). To retrieve half of the characteristics in the retrieval practice task, they were divided into two sets, A and B, each containing six characteristics. Procedure The participants performed the experiment in small groups. They were all told to pay attention to the event because afterwards they would be evaluated. After watching the video half of the participants from the experimental group did the retrieval practice with half of the blonde man’s characteristics and the other half of the participants with half of the dark-haired man’s characteristics. Additionally, in both cases half of the participants practiced the characteristics in set A and the other half practiced the characteristics in set B. As in the previous experiment they performed two retrieval practice tasks. For the first retrieval exercise, participants were given a cued-recall task (e.g. The blonde man is about 20 y___) and then were told to answer questions on the same contents (e.g. How old is the blonde man?). These tasks lasted approximately 3 minutes. Afterwards they were given 5 minutes to solve 50 anagrams. Participants in the non-retrieval practice control group spent 8 minutes solving the anagrams. All of the participants then did a free recall task both immediately and a day later, writing all of both of the robbers’ characteristics on two sheets of paper numbered 1 to 12, counterbalancing the order in both cases to begin recall with either the blond or the dark-haired man. They worked at their own speed, taking about 5 minutes to complete the task. Results and discussion As in Experiment 1, two judges assessed the recall of the offender characteristics. They assigned one point for every feature recalled, whether correct or not (errors). The retrieval practice success rate was greater than 95% (M ¼ 96.77; SD ¼ 5.47), ensuring that here too the participants performed the retrieval practice tasks properly. Furthermore, as in the previous experiment there were no differences in retrieval practice success rates between sets A and B, t(30) ¼ 1.55, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.07. Neither were there significant differences between sets A and B in the final recall for any of the conditions (Rpþ, Rp, Nrp), either immediately or the next day. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.



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Table 2. Mean proportion of recalled offender characteristics by retrieval practice conditions, and facilitation and inhibition effects Retrieval conditions Final recall Immediate Day

Rpþ 0.87 0.86

Rp 0.20 0.22

Nrp 0.38 0.39

Facilitation

Inhibition

(Rpþ) Nrp

(Rp) Nrp

0.49 0.47

0.18 0.17

Note: Rpþ ¼ practiced characteristics from the practiced offender; Rp ¼ unpracticed characteristics from the practiced offender; Nrp ¼ unpracticed characteristics from the unpracticed offender. p < 0.001.

Although we thought that the experimental group participants might remember more of the unpracticed Nrp offender characteristics than the control group, since they could take advantage of the practiced characteristics of the other offender, this effect was not observed, and there were no significant differences between the two conditions either immediately (Nrp ¼ 0.38, Control ¼ 0.35, t(58) ¼ 1.55, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.04) or the next day (Nrp ¼ 0.39, Control ¼ 0.35, t(58) ¼ 1.08, n.s., h2 ¼ 0.02). Therefore, facilitation and inhibition effects were analysed with the Nrp scores obtained by the experimental group. Table 2 shows the proportion of offender characteristics remembered in the final recall task. It includes the recall of Rpþ practiced characteristics, Rp unpracticed characteristics and Nrp non-retrieval practice characteristics in the experimental group, and the facilitation and inhibition effects, both immediately and the next day. To analyse the facilitation effects an ANOVA 2 (Retrieval conditions: Rpþ, Nrp) 2 (Immediate recall, next day) was performed, with repeated measures in both factors. We found facilitation (Rpþ > Nrp), F(1, 31) ¼ 126.60, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.80, both immediately, t(31) ¼ 9.72, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.75, and the next day, t(31) ¼ 11.66, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.81. However, no significant effects were observed in either the interval factor or interaction (F < 1). Inhibition was analysed using an ANOVA 2 (Retrieval conditions: Rp, Nrp) x 2 (Immediate recall, next day) with repeated measures in both factors. In contrast with the results for actions of the event, inhibition emerged (Rp < Nrp) for offender characteristics, F(1, 31) ¼ 33.53, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.52, both immediately, t(31) ¼ 5.77, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.52, and the next day, t(31) ¼ 4.92, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.44. This case did reveal the negative effects of partial retrieval practice, although neither the interval factor nor interaction (F < 1) was significant. At any rate, similar facilitation effects, F(1, 58) ¼ 180, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.76, (immediate ¼ 0.52, t(58) ¼ 11.26, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.69; next day ¼ 0.51, t(58) ¼ 13.79, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.77) and inhibition effects, F(1, 58) ¼ 15.70, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.21, (immediate ¼ 0.15, t(58) ¼ 4.26, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.24; day ¼ 0.13, t(58) ¼ 3.21, p ¼ 0.002, h2 ¼ 0.15) were found when comparing performance with the control group. Moreover, these effects were not influenced by having practiced the characteristics of the blonde or the dark-haired man, or by initiating final recall with the characteristics of one or the other offender. In this experiment no differences were observed either between immediate and delayed recall in any of the conditions (Rpþ, Rp, Nrp, Control). Just like in the previous experiment, here too participants used the strategy of replicating the same contents, order and verbal form from immediate recall to long-term recall. This Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


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effect was observed in Rpþ practiced characteristics (95.65%), Rp unpracticed characteristics (91.89%), Nrp baseline (90.91%) and in the control group (92.79%). There were no errors in Rpþ practiced characteristics and very few in Rp unpracticed characteristics (M ¼ 0.56; SD ¼ 0.82); however, error rates increased in both the Nrp condition (M ¼ 2.06; SD ¼ 2.04) and the control group (M ¼ 2.17; SD ¼ 1.87). Just like in correct recall, errors, for offender characteristics produced immediately, were replicated in long-term recall. This repetition effect emerged in Rp (70.58%), Nrp (96.87%) and control group (82.64%) conditions. Several aspects stand out in the results. In first place, compared with recall performance for actions of the event, the recall of offender characteristics was rather poor. This impairment in remembering the characteristics of criminal offenders has been observed in studies of real-life events (e.g. Christianson & Hu¨binette, 1993; Woolnough & MacLeod, 2001; Yuille & Cutshall, 1986) and laboratory studies (e.g. Clifford & Scott, 1978; Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2004). In our experiment, participants as a whole remembered less than 50% of the characteristics and only 38% in the case of the unpracticed offender. By contrast, they effectively remembered the practiced characteristics, perhaps to make up for their lack of memory. Thus, over twice as much facilitation emerged for perpetrator characteristics than for actions (average, 0.48 vs 0.20). And in spite of deficiencies in recalling offender characteristics, compared with the control group the participants did not take advantage of the guidelines of the practiced characteristics of one of offenders to remember the characteristics of the other unpracticed offender. This may be because each person was conceived as a different unit or entity. Second, inhibition was systematic when assessed with the Nrp elements in the experimental group and compared with the control group. Moreover, inhibition reached 18%, showing an even higher degree of RIF than MacLeod’s observations in the recall of the characteristics of two women (2002, Experiment 2). Third, just like actions in Experiment 1, the 24-hour recall of offenders was a replica of immediate recall in more than 90% of the characteristics in all of the conditions: Rpþ, Rp, baseline Nrp and control group. This repetition effect spreads to the errors that appeared in the recall of characteristics in the Rp, Nrp and control conditions, but participants made no errors in the recall of Rpþ practiced characteristics.

GENERAL DISCUSSION The present study produced two major findings. First, retrieving part of the actions involved in the event did not affect the later recall of the remaining actions (Experiment 1). On the other hand, repeatedly retrieving part of one of the perpetrator’s characteristics deteriorated the recall of the other characteristics of that same person (Experiment 2). The event, much like real-life events, was made up of an organised sequence of actions that integrated the acts from beginning to end. The actions were not independent acts, but were interconnected spatially and temporally, and in many cases one action triggered the next. When the witnesses recounted the event they described the actions in chronological order; mentioning an action could serve as a clue to help them remember other facts of the event. In addition, previous knowledge of actions that commonly occur in certain crimes may have helped them understand the event during encoding and organise recall during retrieval. All of these characteristics—organised information, causal and spatial-temporal relationships, and previous knowledge of acts—may have rendered the actions of the event resistant to inhibitory processes. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.



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Studies on RIF using other materials and procedures have also observed that any strategy which reinforces the organisation of the study material reduces competition between elements and prevents inhibitory effects caused by partial retrieval practice. For example, Koutstaal et al. (1999) observed RIF when participants used photographs to review unrelated actions they had experienced in the same episodic context, whereas the effect did not emerge with events from different contexts: actions occurring in a park or office (Koutstaal, Schacter, Johnson, Angell, & Gross, 1998). Separating the actions in two spatial-temporal contexts reduced the competition between them and facilitated organisation of the material. RIF is also reduced when participants form interconnections between items, either spontaneously or under explicit instruction to do so (Anderson & Bell, 2001; Anderson & McCulloch, 1999; Smith & Hunt, 2000). Lastly, a reduction in retrieval interference is also observed when learned facts are linked by spatial or temporal relationships (Myers et al., 1984) or are consistent with pre-existing knowledge schemata (Dunn & Spellman, 2003; Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2006; Quinn, Hugenberg, & Bodenhausen, 2004; Smith, Adams, & Schorr, 1978). For example, working with verbal material, Migueles and Garcıá-Bajos (2006) observed that the selective retrieval of typical actions of a street mugging script did not produce inhibition, whereas practicing low-typicality actions that were not part of the script and were more specific and independent did produce RIF. A different pattern of results emerged with offender characteristics. The characteristics that describe a person are specific, independent of one another and difficult to integrate or relate because there is no relation of dependency between them (i.e. a tall person does not necessarily have long hair or wear jeans). Only one study has analysed RIF for offender characteristics. MacLeod (2002) presented a bogus money collection carried out by two women. He observed that practicing the characteristics of one of the women inhibited the retrieval of the other characteristics of the same person. An aspect that appears to be decisive is the similarity of the material since it promotes competition and foments the emergence of temporary forgetting. For example, induced forgetting has been observed when participants were asked to recall stolen objects (MacLeod, 2002; Shaw et al., 1995), form impressions of two characters based on positive personality traits (Macrae & MacLeod, 1999; MacLeod & Macrae, 2001), study the characteristics of fictitious islands for a geography exam (Macrae & MacLeod, 1999), or when participants studied positive or negative personal experiences of two characters (Garcıá-Bajos & Migueles, 2005). In the study by Garcıá-Bajos and Migueles (2005), the two characters could have the same type of emotional experience (either positive or negative) or different types of experiences (one character positive and the other negative, or viceversa). Inhibition was only observed when both had experiences of the same nature, most likely because the material was difficult to organise separately. Moreover, the participants’ memory for the 16 target actions (Experiment 1) was better than for the 12 offender characteristics (Experiment 2). In the first case, the control group performance exceeded 0.56 immediately and the next day, whereas recall was notably worse for offender characteristics in the control group (0.35) and the Nrp rate for the unpracticed robber serving as baseline (0.38). These findings are consistent with other studies on RIF in eyewitness memory. With regard to actions, Migueles and Garcıá-Bajos (2006) examined eight high-typicality actions and eight low-typicality actions of an event, and in both cases found recall proportions over 0.50 for the control group (0.58, 0.52) and the Nrp baseline condition (0.57, 0.50). As for offender characteristics, MacLeod (2002) analysed 10 characteristics of two women involved in fraudulent money collections and Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


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found scores of 0.41 in the control group and 0.46 in the Nrp condition (Experiment 2), relatively low values when compared with Nrp scores (0.72) in the burglary of eight electrical and non-electrical items from two houses (Experiment 1). These results are also consistent with various studies on eyewitness memory (e.g. Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 2004; Woolnough & MacLeod, 2001; Yuille & Cutshall, 1986) which have shown that witnesses are better at recalling and recognising the actions involved in an event than offender characteristics. Errors were minimal in the recall of actions, but increased for offender characteristics, especially in the Nrp baseline and control conditions, and most were replicated in the second recall task. Errors in the recall of person characteristics are a known fact in eyewitness memory studies (e.g. Christianson & Hubinette, 1993; Migueles & Garcıá-Bajos, 1999; Woolnough & MacLeod, 2001; Yuille & Cutshall, 1986). In the present study inhibition was found in person characteristics, which scored poorer than actions, but which benefited more from retrieval practice than did actions; thus, the degree of facilitation in offender characteristics (0.48) is more than twice as high as it is for actions (0.20). This does not mean that poor recall performance implies competition and interference, and as a result, inhibition, or that the degree of facilitation can explain RIF. For example, using semantic categories, Anderson et al. (1994, pp. 1078–1079) obtained higher recall for strong items than for week items and inhibition affected the strong exemplars. Therefore, the difficulty of the material does not presuppose the effects of inhibitory processes. Concerning the degree of facilitation, in both this study and the study by Anderson et al. (1994), poorly recalled items benefited more from practice, regardless of level of inhibition. With regard to evaluation interval, in the present study there were no differences between immediate and long-term recall, either for actions (Experiment 1) or offender characteristics (Experiment 2). Eyewitnesses to real crimes are good at retaining information in the long term. For example, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) interviewed 13 witnesses to a real shooting incident after an interval of 5 months and observed that there were no significant changes in the percentages of the recall of actions, person descriptions and details compared to the initial police interview. Laboratory studies based on simulated events have shown that the repetition of recall can even improve the retrieval of an event (Bornstein, Liebek, & Scarberry, 1998), promoting the recall of information not provided in previous attempts (Dunning & Stern, 1992; Scrivner & Safer, 1988; Turtle & Yuille, 1994). In this study, however, we observed no improvement in recall brought about by repetition. The participants could neither provide new elements nor spontaneously retrieve the content inhibited in the first session. Immediate recall was essential for maintaining information in the long term. As Bjork (1988) pointed out, immediate retrieval changes the normal nature of memory, protecting and consolidating the encoded information and interrupting the normal loss of information. This benefit of immediate recall is observed even when the second evaluation is delayed 30 days (Ebbesen & Rienick, 1998). In our study the participants repeated in the long-term recall the same correct information and errors recalled in the immediate evaluation. To elaborate recall they seemed to rely more on the memory of the previous account than on their recall of the event. Consequently, in both experiments after 24-hour delay, they remembered practically the same practiced (Rpþ), unpracticed (Rp) and control elements as they had in the immediate evaluation, replicating the facilitation and inhibition effects from the immediate evaluation. This effect of reproducing the same elements, both true and false, from the immediate evaluation to long-term memory is known as freezing Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.



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effect (Loftus, 1979, pp. 84–87). Bartlett (1932), using the repeated reproduction method, found that successive narrations of a story maintained the same order of events and the same format as the first reproduction. Later, Kay (1955), using prose material, observed that his participants’ recollections seemed more like the previous recall than the original material and that the same errors were carried over from one version to another. In the context of eyewitness memory, Tuckey and Brewer (2003) showed that repeated recall preserved the central information of an event and the errors. Findings from our study clearly show these effects. Since participants systematically repeated the content of immediate recall in delayed recall, it was not possible to assess whether inhibition dissipates in the long term. Although in most real-world cases the testimony that jurors hear is often the third or fourth recall attempt by the witness, in order to do so the retention interval variable would have to be a between-participants factor. This will be one of the aims of our next study. In conclusion, we should point out that research on RIF has important repercussions for evaluating eyewitness memory. Witnesses are repeatedly questioned about an event and often recall does not include all of the contents of the event. This partial retrieval can modify memory, increasing recall for some facts and promoting forgetting of others (MacLeod, 2002; Shaw et al., 1995). Our data demonstrate that inhibition is a strategy that relies on the cognitive system to efficiently retrieve the content or experiences we need at a given time and that these inhibitory processes are activated when the situation so requires. Thus, inhibitory processes need not be activated in order to retrieve part of the most representative and relevant actions of an event, while successful retrieval of specific details, such as offender characteristics or stolen objects (e.g. MacLeod, 2002; Saunders & MacLeod, 2006), requires inhibition of elements of the same nature. That doesn’t mean that all of the actions in an event are somehow immune to RIF. The critical factor is integration. Therefore, retrieving actions which are more particular or less representative, even though they form part of the event and are relevant to the case, may generate inhibition as seen in the study by Migueles and Garcıá-Bajos (2006) using verbal material. The challenge for our next research is to use a video representation to depict the most realistic situation possible in order to analyse how the typicality of the actions of an event affects RIF.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was supported by grant BSO2003-00646/PSE from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologıá, Plan Nacional de Investigacioń Cientı´fica, Desarrollo e Innovacioń Tecnolo´gica (Spain). We thank Michael C. Anderson and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments to the first version of this paper, and Carol Ungar for so capably rendering our ideas into English.

REFERENCES Anderson, M. C. (2003). Rethinking interference theory: Executive control and the mechanisms of forgetting. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 415–445. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


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Anderson, M. C., & Bell, T. (2001). Forgetting our facts: The role of inhibitory processes in the loss of propositional knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 544–570. Anderson, M. C., & Bjork, R. A. (1994). Mechanisms of inhibition in long-term memory. In D. Dagenbach, & T. Carr (Eds.), Inhibitory process in attention, memory, and language (pp. 265–325). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Anderson, M. C., & McCulloch, K. C. (1999). Integration as a general boundary condition on retrieval-induced forgetting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 608–629. Anderson, M. C., & Neely, J. H. (1996). Interference and inhibition in memory retrieval. In E. L. Bjork, & R. A. Bjork (Eds.), Memory. Handbook of perception and cognition (pp. 237–313). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Anderson, M. C., & Spellman, B. A. (1995). On the status of inhibitory mechanisms in cognition: Memory retrieval as a model case. Psychological Review, 102, 68–100. Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: Retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1063–1087. Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering. A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Bjork, R. A. (1975). Retrieval as a memory modifier: An interpretation of negative recency and related phenomena. In R. Solso (Ed.), Information processing and cognition: The Loyola Symposium (pp. 123–144). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bjork, R. A. (1978). The updating of human memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 12, pp. 235–259). New York: Academic Press. Bjork, R. A. (1988). Retrieval practice and the maintenance of knowledge. In M. M. Gruneberg, P. E. Morris, & R. N. Sykes (Eds.), Practical aspects of memory: Current research and issues. Memory in everyday life. (Vol. 1, pp. 396–401). New York: Wiley. Bjork, R. A. (1989). Retreval inhibition as an adaptative mechanism in human memory. In H. L. Roediger, & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honour of Endel Tulving (pp. 309–330). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bornstein, B. H., Liebek, L. M., & Scarberry, N. C. (1998). Repeated testing in eyewitness memory: A means to improve recall of a negative emotional event. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 119–131. ˚ ., & Hu¨binette, B. (1993). Hands Up! A study of witnesses’ emotional reactions Christianson, S.-A and memories associates with bank robberies. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 7, 365–379. Clifford, B. R., & Scott, J. (1978). Individual and situational factors in eyewitness testimony. Journal of Applied Psychology, 63, 352–359. Dunn, E. W., & Spellman, B. A. (2003). Forgetting by remembering: Stereotype inhibition through rehearsal of alternative aspects of identity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 420–433. Dunning, D., & Stern, L. B. (1992). Examining the generality of eyewitness hypermnesia: A close look at time delay and question type. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 6, 643–657. Ebbesen, E. B., & Rienick, C. B. (1998). Retention interval and eyewitness memory for events and personal identifying attributes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 745–762. Fisher, R. P., & Geiselman, R. E. (1992). Memory-enhancing techniques for investigative interviewing. The cognitive interview. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Garcıá-Bajos, E., & Migueles, M. (2003). False memories for script actions in a mugging account. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 15, 195–208. Garcıá-Bajos, E., & Migueles, M. (2005). Olvido inducido por la recuperacioń con experiencias emocionales positivas y negativas. Cognitiva, 17, 115–125. Holst, V. F., & Pezdek, K. (1992). Scripts for typical crimes and their effects on memory for eyewitness testimony. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 6, 573–587. Kay, H. (1955). Learning and retaining verbal material. British Journal of Psychology, 46, 81–100. Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Johnson, M. K., Angell, K. E., & Gross, M. S. (1998). Post-event review in older and younger adults: Improving memory accessibility of complex everyday events. Psychology and Aging, 13, 277–296. Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Johnson, M. K., & Galluccio, L. (1999). Facilitation and impairment of event memory produced by photograph review. Memory & Cognition, 27, 478–493. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.



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Levy, B. J., & Anderson, M. C. (2002). Inhibitory processes and the control of memory retrieval. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 299–305. List, J. A. (1986). Age and schematic differences in the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Developmental Psychology, 22, 50–97. Loftus, E. F. (1979). Eyewitness testimony. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press. MacLeod, M. D. (2002). Retrieval-induced forgetting in eyewitness memory: Forgetting as a consequence of remembering. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16, 135–149. MacLeod, M. D., & Macrae, C. N. (2001). Gone but not forgotten: The transient nature of retrieval-induced forgetting. Psychological Science, 12, 148–152. Macrae, C. N., & MacLeod, M. D. (1999). On recollections lost: When practice makes imperfect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 463–473. Macrae, C. N., & Roseveare, T. A. (2002). I was always on my mind: The self and temporary forgetting. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 611–614. Migueles, M., & Garcıá-Bajos, E. (2006). Influence of the typicality of the actions in a mugging script on retrieval-induced forgetting. Psicolo´gica. International Journal of Methodology and Experimental Psychology, 27, 119–135. Migueles, M., & Garcıá-Bajos, E. (1999). Recall, recognition, and confidence patterns in eyewitness testimony. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 257–268. Migueles, M., & Garcıá-Bajos, E. (2004). ¡Esto es un atraco! Sesgos de la tipicidad en la memoria de testigos. Estudios de Psicologıá, 25, 331–342. Myers, J. L., O’Brien, E. J., Balota, D. A., & Toyofuku, M. L. (1984). Memory search without interference: The role of integration. Cognitive Psychology, 16, 217–242. Quinn, K. A., Hugenberg, K., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2004). Functional modularity in stereotype representation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 519–527. Saunders, J., & MacLeod, M. D. (2006). Can inhibition resolve retrieval competition through the control of spreading activation? Memory & Cognition, 34, 307–322. Scrivner, E., & Safer, M. (1988). Eyewitnesses show hypermnesia for details about a violent event. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73, 371–377. Shaw, J. S., Bjork, R. A., & Handal, A. (1995). Retrieval-induced forgetting in an eyewitness-memory paradigm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2, 249–253. Smith, E. E., Adams, N., & Schorr, D. (1978). Fact retrieval and the paradox of interference. Cognitive Psychology, 10, 438–464. Smith, R. E., & Hunt, R. (2000). The influence of distinctive processing on retrieval-induced forgetting. Memory & Cognition, 28, 503–508. Sporer, S. L. (1996). Psychological aspects of person descriptions. In S. L. Sporer, R. S. Malpass, & G. Koehnkeng (Eds.), Psychological issues in eyewitness identification (pp. 53–86). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Storm, B. C., Bjork, E. L., Bjork, R. A., & Nestojko, J. F. (in press). Is retrieval success a necessary condition for retrieval-induced forgetting? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Tollestrup, P. A., Turtle, J. W., & Yuille, J. C. (1994). Actual victims and witnesses to robbery and fraud: An archival analysis. In D. F. Ross, J. D. Read, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), Adult eyewitness testimony. Current trends and developments (pp. 144–160). New York: Cambridge University Press. Tuckey, M. R., & Brewer, N. (2003). How schemas affect eyewitness memory over repeated retrieval attemps. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 785–800. Turtle, J. W., & Yuille, J. C. (1994). Lost but not forgotten details: Repeated eyewitness recall leads to reminiscence but not hypermnesia. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 260–271. Woolnough, P. S., & MacLeod, M. D. (2001). Watching the birdie watching you: Eyewitness memory for action using CCTV recordings of actual crimes. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15, 395–411. Yuille, J. C., & Cutshall, J. L. (1986). A case study of eyewitness memory for a crime. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 291–301.



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APPENDIX A Actions of the Robbery of a person withdrawing money from a cash machine. For the retrieval practice: set A shown in regular type, set B in italics. The first and last two actions were set aside to avoid the effects of primacy and recency. A woman leaves a photograph shop She walks down the aisle looking at her pictures A young man gets money from a cash machine Two men are near the machine watching him The blonde man grabs him from behind The blonde man says ‘don’t make a move’ The dark-haired man takes his money The dark-haired man runs off with the money The blonde man knocks him down The young man picks his wallet up from the ground The young man shouts ‘you bastards!’ When he realises what happened, a security guard runs after them In the aisle the security guard shouts ‘hey, stop!’ The people stop and watch As they’re running down the aisle, they bump into a woman and knock her over The woman who picked up the photos heads toward the escalator The two men run down the escalator They completely knock the woman over The security guard goes down the escalator shouting ‘you bastards!’

The men hop over the escalator handrail and run away The security guard gets on his radio and calls an ambulance

APPENDIX B Offender characteristics. For retrieval practice: set A shown in regular type and set B in italics. Blonde man

Dark-haired man

Around 20 years old Thin build Height average-tall Long face Long straight hair Hair tied back in a ponytail Leather choker Goatee Grey t-shirt with a design on the chest Blue wool jacket Red and white chequered trousers Training shoes

Around 20 years old Normal build Height average-short Round face Curly hair Thick hair Leather choker Three-day beard Blue and white t-shirt with writing Blue track suit bottoms Track suit bottoms with white stripes Canvas trainers



Selective retrieval and induced forgetting in eyewitness memory

Selective retrieval and induced forgetting in eyewitness memory

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