The influence of biographical information on event memory: when it's not what you know but whom you know

In this study, we investigated the effects on memory or the provision of contextual information concerning the central character depicted in a brief video film. The findings of the study, which involved 82 male and 103 female student subjects, suggest that at test a week later, recognition judgments for foil sequences were biased in context-specific ways. However, the influence of the contextual information on memory was observed only when the information was made available to subjects before or immediately after seeing the film. When the character information was provided only after a week's retention interval, no significant contextual influences were found. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for memory theory and eyewitness reliability.