Put that phone down and look around you! How recording events can affect witness memory
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1
Department of Psychological Science, School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Australia
Aim: Utilising a smartphone to record a witnessed event as it occurs has become almost ubiquitous and may have implications for eyewitness’ memory of the event. There tends to be a heavy reliance on eyewitness testimonies in the criminal justice system, however wrongful convictions can be made due to inaccurate testimony and identifications from eyewitnesses. Attentional focus is a key factor that affects memory during the encoding stage and the subsequent retrieval of information. It may be that recording with a phone diverts attention away from the event, negatively impacting memory for the event. The current study aims to investigate the effects of recording a witnessed event on a smartphone while manipulating focused attention through subevents. Participants: 50 participants aged 18-61 (M=25.0, SD=8.8) were recruited from University students and the local community. Method: Participants were instructed to either record or observe an event projected onto a wall, depicting a scene at a park where a theft occurred. After engaging in a brief distractor task (colouring in a picture), participants completed a questionnaire regarding the witnessed event.
Results: Participants in the Record condition had significantly poorer recall than those in the Observe condition. There was no significant difference in memory recollection between subevent conditions, and no interaction effect between experimental and subevent conditions.
Conclusions: These findings indicate that the mere act of using a mobile phone to record an event while attending to it influences the information that is encoded, and thus negatively impacts memory recollection. This suggests that the act of recording the event is broadly distracting and we can have less confidence in recall under these conditions. This would be particularly relevant for parts of the event not recorded or if there was a problem with the recording.
Keywords:
Eyewitness Memory,
Attention,
encoding,
smartphone,
Recall
Conference:
15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference , Coffs Harbour, Australia, 4 Oct - 5 Oct, 2018.
Presentation Type:
Research
Topic:
Abstract for 15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference
Citation:
Mourad
J and
Longstaff
MG
(2019). Put that phone down and look around you! How recording events can affect witness memory.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2018.74.00024
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Received:
18 Sep 2018;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
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Correspondence:
Miss. Jasmine Mourad, Department of Psychological Science, School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, Australia, jasmine.mourad@hotmail.com