Eyewitness Memory for Firearms: Narrative Accounts and Specific Questioning in the Elucidation of Accurate Information

Abstract

Much eyewitness research has addressed memory for persons and scenes, but limited work has addressed memory for firearms, frequently an important point in investigations and in court. The present research addressed this topic using the format of a traditional police interview, in which seventy subjects provided unrestricted free recall of a weapon seen in a crime situation, followed by responses to specific questions. Three firearms were used in a between-subjects format: a typical modern semi-automatic pistol, a less-typical Old West revolver, and an atypical single-shot muzzle-loading pistol. In the free recall stage, respondents provided about four times as many correct as incorrect details. However, in the specific-question stage, there were only 1.2 times as many new correct responses as new incorrect details, consistent with current cognitive theory. No difference between the weapons was observed in the production of correct responses, but the revolver and single-shot pistol resulted in more incorrect responses than did the modern semi-automatic, regardless of the saliency of weapon features. These results demonstrate the importance of the original, initial free recall phase in developing accurate identification of a given weapon, and of the type of weapon involved, and have important implications for police interviewing for accurate weapon identification.