The Effects of Dyadic Discussion on Earwitness Recall

Abstract

Some 112 introductory psychology students served as subjects in a mock kidnapping study. Subjects overheard a telephone conversation by a perpetrator discussing his crime and were tested for their reconstructions of the incident either 10 min later or 48 hr later. Dyadic discussion followed by collaborative recall did not increase the overall accuracy of individual's reconstructions of the incident, but it did produce consistent, concise, and conventional accounts of the incident. Reliably, more fabrications were found in the dyadic-discussion-individual-recall group than in the recalls of the collaborative-dyad group and the no-discussion-individual-recall group. Estimations of the duration of the incident also were reliably inferior in the dyadic-discussion-individual-recall condition. Given only the voice of the perpetrator, subjects' judgments of height, weight, and age were estimated poorly. Rated descriptions of voice attributes and personality traits of the perpetrator generally were not influenced...