Abstract
We examined how encoding view influences the information that is stored in and retrieved from memory during an eyewitness identification task. Participants watched a mock crime and we varied the angle from which they viewed the perpetrator. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 2904) were tested with a static photo lineup; the viewing angle of the lineup members was the same or different from the perpetrator at encoding. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 1430) were tested with a novel interactive lineup in which they could rotate the lineup faces into any angle. In both experiments, discrimination accuracy was greater when the viewing angle at encoding and test matched. Participants reinstated the angle of the interactive faces to match their encoding angle. Our results highlight the importance of encoding specificity for eyewitness identification, and show that people actively seek out information in the testing environment that matches the study environment to aid memory retrieval.
Highlights
We examined how encoding view influences the information that is stored in and retrieved from memory during an eyewitness identification task
We introduce a novel interactive lineup procedure to test whether during the lineup people spontaneously reinstate the angle at which they saw the perpetrator, and if so, whether pose-reinstatement is associated with increased discrimination accuracy
The results indicated that discrimination accuracy was higher when the lineup members could be seen in the same pose compared to when they were seen in a different pose in all encoding conditions, albeit the effect was more reliable in the frontal pose than in the right-profile condition
Summary
We examined how encoding view influences the information that is stored in and retrieved from memory during an eyewitness identification task. We ask (1) whether consistent viewpoint information at study and at test is associated with higher discrimination accuracy; and (2) whether people naturally reinstate at test the pose in which they had viewed a perpetrator if given the opportunity to do so with an interactive lineup.
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