Eyewitness testimony after three months: A field study on memory for an incident in everyday life

Abstract

There are cases when one is asked to give testimony about an incident that was of no significance until a certain point in time, after which it suddenly became important. Based upon a real case in which a salesclerk gave eyewitness testimony and identified a suspect from a photograph 4 months after the sale, we studied the accuracy of memory for such an incident in everyday life in natural settings. Eighty-six salesclerks served as subjects. A confederate (customer) visited a store and bought some goods from a clerk. Three months later, the clerk was asked to remember the person (customer) and the event (the sales exchanges), and to identify a photograph of the customer. Half the subjects remembered the details of the person and the event and, of these, two-thirds were accurate. However, although two-thirds of the subjects claimed to identify the customer from a photograph, only 13% were accurate. Correlational analyses showed that the quantity (duration of the contact) as well as the quality (the clerk's impression of unusualness of the customer, etc.) predicted accuracy of memory. © 1996 Japanese Psychological Association. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd.