Abstract
Misleading postevent information increases the probability of incorrectly recognizing a detail suggested by the misleading information. This often-reproduced finding has been interpreted as demonstrating both memory impermanence (e.g., Loftus & Loftus, 1980) and recoding (e.g., Tulving, 1983). However, recent evidence suggests that postevent information affects not the memory of the original event, but rather the guessing bias when memory fails. An experiment is presented that supports this response-bias interpretation. Providing witnesses with the original sequence information, even after they had already chosen the incorrect detail on an earlier test, greatly enhanced the probability of their retrieving the original memory—previously believed to be irretrievable—and improved the validity of the witnesses’ confidence ratings.
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An earlier version of this report was presented in 1987 to the Second International Conference on Practical Aspects of Memory, Swansea, Wales.
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Kroll, N.E.A., Ogawa, K.H. & Nieters, J.E. Eyewitness memory and the importance of sequential information. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 26, 395–398 (1988). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334895
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334895