Would reading an account of an event refresh your memory?

Witnesses to an event who have prepared an account of it may be given an opportunity to review this account or to read another account before testifying. The authors investigated the effects of this procedure by using participant accounts and both accurate and misleading experimenter-prepared accounts. Another experimental group did not review any account. Participants given no opportunity to refresh memory were less accurate in free recall than participants who refreshed memory, but they were equally accurate in answering direct questions. Measures of consistency between performance on testing sessions showed that the opportunity to review a self-produced account resulted in more consistent performance than nonreview. Results of this study have important implications in pretrial witness preparation.