NCJ Number
137636
Journal
Journal of Social Psychology Volume: 131 Issue: 6 Dated: (1991) Pages: 807- 813
Date Published
1991
Length
7 pages
Annotation
A sample of 52 American undergraduate psychology students, who appraised their observational abilities, was used to test three hypotheses regarding pre-report delay and witness certainty: delay will decrease accuracy of recall, emotional content of a scene will decrease accuracy, and self-report will correlate negatively with tested accuracy.
Abstract
The students watched one of two videotapes: the first portrayed a neutral scene, while the second began with a similar scenario but ended with a purse snatching. Participants answered 10 descriptive questions about what they had seen immediately after viewing the tape and 48 hours later. The respondents' self-reported ability to remember detail was significantly correlated with accuracy in overall memory for specifics about the incident and the female target. There was also a correlation between self- reported ability to describe people and memory of color details in the videotape. There was no difference between the accuracy of observations of either videotape. 19 references