NCJ Number
96775
Journal
Journal of Applied Social Psychology Volume: 14 Issue: 4 Dated: (July-August 1984) Pages: 386-397
Date Published
1985
Length
12 pages
Annotation
People's memory of events is often improved when there is some similarity between the conditions attending the original incident and the conditions present at the time of memory search. These context cues are commonly used by criminal investigators when obtaining eyewitness descriptions (recall tasks). The present research explored the impact of context cues on eyewitness identification responses (recognition tasks).
Abstract
It was found that reinstating the physical environment in which the crime was witnessed had no discernible effects. Even worse, resinstatement of the personal appearance of the criminal (distinctive shirt and glasses) had several undesirable consequences. The most important of these was the power of personal appearance context cues to facilitate false alarms (positive identification of innocent targets). There was no evidence that appearance cues actually improved memory of the criminal's facial characteristics. Possibilities for more effective context manipulations were explored. Emphasis was placed against generalizing from the beneficial effect of context on recall to applied problems of recognition. Two tables and 16 references are supplied. (Author abstract modified)