Forensic, clinical and everyday remembering: Exploring the role of perceived audience in changes across autobiographical memory recollections

Abstract

Contradictions and other changes across recollections are interpreted negatively in some settings. This may be problematic because who we share our memories with may affect what we recollect. In our research, we used a retelling paradigm for autobiographical memory to investigate how perceived audience influences consistency of repeated personal memory accounts. Participants free-recalled memories of four autobiographical events either to an imagined police officer, psychologist or friend. One week later, they recalled the same events again to the same imagined audience. Memory accounts changed across recollections, with most participants making omissions, additions and contradictions. Some changes varied across conditions. Participants in the friend condition were least consistent in amount of information provided. Participants in the police officer condition contradicted themselves on details about people present. However, overall audience context did not reliably influence consistency of accounts, rather changes were common. Findings broaden our understanding of social influence on autobiographical memory.