Citation

Odinot G, Wolters G, Lavender T. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 2009; 23(1): 90-97.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/acp.1443

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

During a crime investigation eyewitnesses are often interviewed more than once. Repeated post-event questioning offers an opportunity for retrieval practice. Practicing retrieval of a subset of memories may suppress access to related memories, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting. In this short report we investigated the generalization of retrieval-induced forgetting to episodic eyewitness memory of a complex event. The results indicated that repeated retrieval improves future recall of practiced information, but does not induce forgetting of related information. Retrieval practice, however, did result in higher confidence ratings, both for correct and incorrect answers. The practical consequence of this study is that repeated questioning should be avoided if possible. Not because it may induce retrieval-induced forgetting, but because it may lead to confidence inflation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Language: en