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Improving eyewitness recall for licence plates
Author(s) -
MacKin David P.,
O'Reilly Kim E.,
Geiselman R. Edward
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.2350040205
Subject(s) - recall , psychology , alphanumeric , cognitive interview , interview , character (mathematics) , cognition , social psychology , cognitive psychology , law , computer science , mathematics , psychiatry , geometry , political science , programming language
Two methods for maximizing the completeness and accuracy of eyewitness recall for licence plates were evaluated in this research: (1) asking questions derived from generally accepted principles of memory retrieval enhancement (Geiselman, Fisher, Firstenberg, Hutton, Sullivan, Avetissian and Prosk, 1984; Geiselman, Fisher, MacKinnon and Holland, 1985, 1986) and (2) providing subjects with a licence plate simulation device to view and interchange alphanumeric characters. Undergraduate subjects viewed a series of slides portraying a young man, placing a television set in a car and driving down the street. With a seven‐character California plate in Experiment 1 ( n = 151), subjects in the condition with the simulation device and cognitive interviewing had a significant 22 per cent increase in correct licence plate recall. The results were replicated in Experiment 2 ( n = 108) with an 18 per cent increase in correct information using a six‐character plate. Errors appeared to be those letters adjacent in the alphabet to the licence plate letters.