Repeated interviews about repeated trauma from the distant past: A study of report consistency

Abstract

Testing our beliefs about memory for crimes with participants who have memories for crimes is an essential component of research that is meant to be applied outside of the laboratory (e.g., Yuille, Ternes, & Cooper, 2010). This is a challenge, not just because it is difficult to locate and recruit participants with memories for crimes, but because the research is messy: often there is no control group, base truth is not known, and random assignment is impossible (see Paz-Alonso, Ogle, & Goodman, this volume). Notwithstanding these difficulties, applied work is essential if we are to have an impact (see Yuille, present volume). In this spirit, we describe a study in which a woman who reported having been a victim of five armed bank robberies in Montreal, Canada in the 1970s and who recalled the experiences on three separate occasions. First, we explain why this work was undertaken.