Abstract
In eyewitness testimony research, postevent information impair retention of the original event and increases the probability that interpolated information will be identified as part:of the original event. The present experiments studied these effects with 3-month-olds. Infants learned to kick to move a particular crib mobile and then were briefly exposed to information about a novel mobile. The novel postevent information impaired recognition of the-original mobile when it immediately followed training but not when it was delayed by 1 day. Like adults, infants treated the postevent information as part of the original training event, continuing to do so for at least 2 weeks. We propose that postevent information displaces conflicting information coactive with it in primary memory and creates a new, updated memory token of the event. Once the new token leaves primary memory, however, it is protected; only a copy can be retrieved and modified in the future.
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This research was supported by Grants MH32307 and MH00902 to CR-C. from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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Rovee-Collier, C., Borza, M.A., Adler, S.A. et al. Infants' eyewitness testimony: Effects of postevent information on a prior memory representation. Mem Cogn 21, 267–279 (1993). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202738
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202738