Premium
The influence of question order on eyewitness accuracy
Author(s) -
Morris Valerie,
Morris Peter E.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1985.tb01959.x
Subject(s) - witness , psychology , recall , eyewitness testimony , order (exchange) , social psychology , eyewitness memory , cognitive psychology , linguistics , philosophy , finance , economics
The influence of the order in which questions are asked of witnesses was tested with four question orders. When answering the same questions about a film, witnesses were more accurate if the question order followed the time sequence of the film or began with questions on the central characters than if questioning first concerned the main event, or was randomly ordered. It is argued that the question orders eliciting better recall match the organization of the information entered in memory. The correlations between a free account of the film and the accuracy and amount recalled with questions were less than 0·3, indicating that a good witness in one condition may not be so if tested in a different way.