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Related Experiment Videos

When believing is seeing: the effect of scripts on eyewitness memory

M S Greenberg1, D R Westcott, S E Bailey

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

Law and Human Behavior
|January 6, 1999
PubMed
Summary

Eyewitness memory can be distorted by event schemas, or scripts. Participants falsely recalled central robbery actions more often than peripheral ones, especially after a longer delay, impacting eyewitness accounts.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Eyewitness Testimony Research

Background:

  • Event schemas, or scripts, influence memory recall.
  • Prior research indicates schemas can lead to memory errors.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how event schemas contribute to memory errors in eyewitness accounts.
  • To examine the conditions under which script-based errors occur in robbery eyewitnesses.

Main Methods:

  • Study 1: Identified common robbery scripts through participant consensus.
  • Study 2: Exposed participants to robbery scenarios with omitted central or peripheral script actions.
  • Varied exposure rate and retention interval (5 minutes to 1 week).

Main Results:

  • Participants exhibited a higher rate of false recognition for omitted central script actions compared to peripheral actions.

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  • This tendency for central action misrecall was amplified with longer retention intervals.

    • Conclusions:

    • Event schemas can lead to significant gap-filling errors in eyewitness memory.
    • Memory distortions are more pronounced for central script elements and over extended periods.