The Bizarreness Effect and Memory: Implications for Eyewitness Testimony

Jennifer Wiseman

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Wilkes Honors College

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

with a Concentration in Psychology

Wilkes Honors College of

Florida Atlantic University

Jupiter, Florida

May 2008

The Bizarreness Effect and Memory: Implications for Eyewitness Testimony by Jennifer Wiseman This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Julie L. Earles, and has been approved by the members of her/his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

______Dr. Julie L. Earles

______Dr. William O’Brien

______Dean, Wilkes Honors College

______Date

ABSTRACT

Author: Jennifer Wiseman

Title: The bizarreness effect and memory: Implications for

eyewitness testimony

Institution: Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Julie L. Earles

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

Concentration: Psychology

Year: 2008

Mistakes in combining components of stimuli are called binding or memory conjunction errors. They occur when people mistakenly associate two previously seen stimulus features that were not previously seen together. It is hypothesized that bizarre items will be better remembered than common items. Participants saw 18 continuous events, each containing four actions performed by four different actors. One week later they returned for a recognition test and were shown more video clips. There were old, new action, and conjunction items. A conjunction item was composed of a familiar actor performing a familiar action that had previously been performed by someone else. For each clip, participants were asked if they saw this person perform this action before. Participants responded ―yes‖ to conjunction same context items more often than they did to conjunction different context items.

iii

To all of my friends, who helped me so much

Table of Contents

1. List of Tables…………………………………………………………………….v 2. The Bizarreness Effect and Memory: Implications for Eyewitness Testimony………………………………………………………………………..1 a. Introduction………………………………………………………………1 b. Overview of Experiment………………………………………………17 3. Method………………………………………………………………………….18 a. Participants…………………………………………………………….18 b. Procedure……………………………………………………………...19 i. Stimuli generation and filming……………………………….19 ii. Encoding……………………………………………………….22 iii. Retrieval………………………………………………………..23 4. Results………………………………………………………………………….24 a. Yes responses…………………………………………………………24 i. Yes responses to non-bizarre items…………………………24 ii. Yes responses to bizarre items………………………………25 b. Confidence data…………………………………………………….....25 i. Non-bizarre items……………………………………………...26 ii. Bizarre items…………………………………………………...26 5. Discussion……………………………………………………………………...27 a. Yes responses…………………………………………………………27 i. Non-bizarre items………………………………………...... 27 ii. Bizarre items…………………………………………………...29 b. Confidence data……………………………………………………….31 i. Non-bizarre items……………………………………………...31 ii. Bizarre items…………………………………………………...32 6. Conclusions……………………………………………………………...... 32

7. Tables 1-5…………………………………………………………………..34-38 8. Figure captions…………………………………………………………………39 9. Figures 1-4…………………………………………………………………40-43 10. Appendices A-B…………………………………………………………...44-45 11. References……………………………………………………………………..46

List of Tables

1. Participant Characteristics

2. Proportion Of Yes Responses By Item Type—Non-Bizarre Items

3. Proportion Of Yes Responses By Item Type—Bizarre Items

4. Average Confidence Ratings By Item Type—Non-Bizarre Items

5. Average Confidence Ratings By Item Type—Bizarre Items

The Bizarreness Effect and Memory: Implications for Eyewitness Testimony

Introduction

Every day we make attributions and associations between features to produce whole objects. We see the color green and a tree full of leaves and later remember this as green leaves. This is an example of binding. This process, creating associations among different stimulus features to represent the relationship among them (Kersten, Earles, Curtayne, & Lane, in press), is generally thought to be automatic. For the most part, we tend to make the correct associations between features, but mistakes do occur. So what causes us to make these errors? To understand this, we first must define the errors themselves.

A binding error, or memory conjunction error, is the result of a person misidentifying a stimulus as ―old‖ because he or she has seen the stimulus parts previously, but not in the current combination (Reinitz, Verfaellie, & Milberg,

1996). These two mistakenly associated features are then believed to belong together (Kersten et al., in press), and the person believes that he or she has seen the newly combined stimulus before (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001). In other words, the global structure of the stimulus parts is not remembered, either because of selectively forgetting or simply failing to encode it (Reinitz et al.,

1996). By referring to the ―global structure‖ we mean the original combination of two stimulus parts, the ―whole‖. It is easy to see that correctly combining features

1 is important. You would not want to take a second dose of a medication because you did not remember that you had already taken it. So if this association is so very important, why do binding errors occur?

Several authors have proposed that these binding errors occur as a result of miscombination of features during retrieval (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001). Others believe that there is a lack of explicit recollection in the face of familiarity (Reinitz

& Hannigan, 2001; Jones & Jacoby, 2001; Earles, Kersten, Curtayne, & Perle, submitted), divided, or lack of attention (Treisman & Schmidt, 1982; Jones &

Jacoby, 2001 ; Prinzmetal, Presti, & Posner,1986; Reinitz, Morrissey, & Demb,

1994), unconscious transference (Read, Tollestrup, Hammersley, McFadzen, &

Christensen,1990; Ross, Ceci, Dunning, & Toglia, 1994; Earles et al., submitted),or source monitoring (Henkel, Johnson, & De Leonardis,1998; Ross et al.,1994).

One implication of the idea that features are miscombined is that the parts must be encoded or stored separately in order for any miscombination to occur.

There are several studies that show evidence for this (Prinzmetal et al., 1986).

These features can include several different things, such as simple and descriptive features like color, size, shape, texture, etc, or they can be more complex, such as actor and action. The systems that process these features are also thought to be independent of each other (Treisman & Schmidt, 1982) and are often described as separate feature maps that encode the separate features, meaning that one would need some sort of bridge between the maps to correctly 2 re-associate the features (Kersten et al., in press). This scenario implies that there is a deficit in memory when conjunction errors are made.

It is also possible that, when encoding a stimulus, one simply fails to encode the association between features, or that the association between the features is forgotten more quickly than the features themselves. It is also possible that the separate features are bound together in the encoding process using an incorrect association and are then remembered in that form (Reinitz &

Hannigan, 2001). This process is seen when memory conjunction errors occur in recall, or when a person is asked to later recognize a stimulus as old or new

(Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001). In non-laboratory settings, an example of this occurs when a person ―mixes their metaphors‖. They express part of one metaphor and part of another as if they were part of the whole, and generally believe that association to be correct.

These possibilities are supported by the proximity effects found by Reinitz and Hannigan (2001). When the distance between two stimuli is the basis for conjunction errors, this is called a proximity effect. In other words, the closer two stimuli are to one another in presentation, the more conjunction errors will be made concerning those two stimuli. When a stimulus was presented to a participant at the same time as at least one other stimulus, the number of conjunction errors increased. Basically, when presented with stimuli at the same time, it rendered the within-pair conjunction stimuli (a blending of the two faces

3 that had been presented together at encoding) much less discernable than other stimuli (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001).

Reinitz et al. (1992) propose that the information concerning the association between stimulus features are stored in episodic memory and the features themselves in another memory center, one that is separate and dissociable from the association itself. An extreme real-life example of binding errors is amnesia. It has been proposed that the basic deficit in amnesia is the formation of new associations between features or elements of memory that already exist in memory (Johnson et al., 1993). The binding in this case is believed to be a function of the hippocampal system (Reinitz et al., 1996).

According to this belief, amnesiacs should not be able to discriminate between old and conjunction stimuli. To test this notion, Reinitz et al., (1996) tested amnesic and normal participants and found that amnesiacs had an impaired ability to determine whether a stimulus was old or a conjunction stimulus, and showed greater sensitivity to stimulus parts than to stimulus wholes (Reinitz et al., 1996). This finding supports the belief that binding in memory occurs in the hippocampal system.

Although everyone is vulnerable to these types of errors, it appears that older adults are more vulnerable and show deficits related to remembering the global structures (Kersten et al., in press). They have been found to have poorer memory for the conjunction of features, even though there was no deficit in the memory for the features individually (Kersten et al., in press). Naveh-Benjamin, 4

Hassain, and Bar-On (2003) have proposed that these findings are the result of an association deficit, in which there is a difficultly in forming the links between features into a whole. It is also possible that the age-related deficits in this association could be the result of the decline in the hippocampal system that comes with age. Reinitz et al. (1996) propose that the function of the hippocampal system is to bind the stimulus features into a whole.

There are two general classes of memory theories that have been proposed to explain the dissociation between stimulus parts and wholes, Multiple

Representation Theories and Emergent Configuration Theories (Reinitz et al.,

1996). Multiple Representation Theories posit that stimulus wholes and features are represented independently in episodic memory. In other words, memory features may be encoded in one part and the association between them in another. Therefore, certain manipulations, such as brain damage to the hippocampal area and divided attention are theorized to interfere with the encoding or retrieval of the stimulus whole more than the encoding or retrieval of the stimulus features (Reinitz et al., 1996).

Emergent Configuration Theories hold that the construction of holistic representations (putting stimulus features into a whole) of stimulus parts on the basis of stored interfeature associations occurs during retrieval from episodic memory. According to these theories, the global representation is not represented in memory as its own entity, but is instead constructed during retrieval (Reinitz et al., 1996). In other words, there are two types of information 5 that are being encoded in memory: featural information, which is information about the stimulus parts, and relational information, which specifies specific types of interfeature relationships, such as contemporality and spatial relations. During retrieval, therefore, a conjunction process occurs that associates the featural information with, or according to the relational information. When only featural information is encoded, memory conjunction errors occur because there is no guideline or past experience of the relationship between the features (Reinitz et al., 1996).

Jones and Jacoby (2001) propose a dual-process theory to explain memory conjunction errors. The theory says that memory conjunction errors are the result of using familiarity associated with the features in the absence of conscious recollection of the exact previous association of the stimulus features

(Kersten et al., in press). The features that make up the conjunction stimulus were both seen previously and therefore elicit a strong sense of familiarity, which would lead a person to respond that the item was ―old‖ when it is in fact not. If subjects do not recall the global structure of the stimuli that each feature occurred in, then they are more likely to use the sense of familiarity to respond that the item is ―old‖. Reinitz and Hannigan (2001) found that proximity effects do not occur when stimuli were presented simultaneously but not sequentially, which may mean that participants were instead using familiarity in order to respond.

This lends support to the miscombination of features that is proposed by Reinitz and Hannigan (2001) as familiarity-based theories posit that all items on a study

6 list should be equally familiar and therefore not subject to proximity effects

(Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001).

Jones and Jacoby’s (2001) dual-process theory says that familiarity, an automatic process, and recollection, a controlled process, provide alternative bases for responding to stimuli (Jones & Jacoby, 2001). Familiarity is usually characterized as a ―fast‖ process and recollection is considered a ―slow‖ process.

People use both processes on recognition tests, although which process is used depends on the stimulus type. Old stimuli are assessed by either familiarity or recollection and both can lead to a ―hit‖ (correctly identifying the word as old), but new words are assessed by familiarity alone. Conjunction stimuli, in which both parts of the ―new‖ stimulus have been previously seen, or feature stimuli, where only one part of the ―new‖ stimulus was previously seen, are assessed by both familiarity and recollection, but they oppose each other. Familiarity causes one to make conjunction errors by recognizing that parts of the current stimulus are old but not that they were not shown together at encoding. Recollection can be used to prevent such errors by recalling that the features had been seen before, but not together as a whole (Jones & Jacoby, 2001).

There are ways to decrease memory conjunction errors by increasing recollection. Jones and Jacoby (2001) found that, by increasing study repetition

(increasing the number of times the stimulus was presented at encoding), and increasing the time for recall during the recognition test, the likelihood that a person would use recollection to correctly identify the origin of the word 7 increased, even though the familiarity of each word was also increased by the repetition.

Treisman and colleagues (1980) proposed a feature-integration theory of attention which posits that attention acts as the necessary component to bind features together in order to be recalled accuracy later. When attention is switched between, or divided, among stimuli, this may cause parts of those stimuli to be encoded in memory together, which can lead to subsequent memory errors, as seen in Reinitz et al., (1994), where they found that dividing attention during encoding reduced the recognition rates for old stimuli more than for conjunction or feature stimuli. Co-attending (having one’s attention divided between two or more stimuli at once) to stimuli can and should cause (according to the attentional hypothesis) the separate features of each stimulus to be bound together and represented as a whole in memory (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001).

Evidence for this comes from experiments that found that when stimuli were presented simultaneously, the number of memory conjunction errors increased relative to the number of memory conjunction errors that were made when stimuli were presented sequentially (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001). In the absence or division of attention, co-occurring parts are not bound together, which leads subjects to be unable to correctly discriminate between old and conjunction items

(Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001). Co-attending to stimuli appears to reduce the number of items that are encoded into memory, meaning that each pair is encoded together as a single block, which can make it very difficult to later

8 determine which specific features occurred in each stimulus. It is then much easier to determine which features occurred in each pair (Reinitz & Hannigan,

2001). It is generally believed that acquiring the features from a stimulus requires little to no attention, but encoding the features together into an accurate whole that can be recalled later requires much attention (Reinitz et al., 1994).

Reinitz et al. (1996) found that divided-attention participants encoded enough featural information to allow them to distinguish between old faces and completely or partially new faces, but had no memory for the global structure of the faces. Dividing attention essentially caused old and conjunction faces to be indistinguishable from one another. Attention is therefore crucial for encoding global, but not featural, information about stimuli into episodic memory (Reinitz et al., 1996).

Unconscious transference is usually talked about in terms of eyewitness testimony and occurs when an eyewitness confuses an innocent but familiar person with an actual assailant (Ross et al., 1994). Read et al. (1990) defines unconscious transference as ―transfer of one person’s identity to that of another person from a different setting, time, or context‖ (pg. 3).This is believed to occur because of automatic processing that encodes an impression of someone in one context and, later when seen in a different context, is then seen as familiar because the person is using the information encoded from the automatic processing (Ross et al., 1994).

Read et al., (1990) found that unconscious transference occurred in events with certain characteristics. When the event did not involve personal interactions between similar people, when the event was not memorable or unusual, and the identification test was at least 2 weeks later. In most criminal cases where eyewitnesses are an important aspect of the apprehension of the suspect are usually ones in which the search for these suspects is not quick.

There are not many cases where the suspect was arrested the next day.

Because of the time involved in solving crimes, this is an especially important finding. There seems to be a need for a middle ground level of familiarity that the person making the identification needs to feel to accurately identify a suspect. If familiarity is too high, the person will make a misidentification, but if there is not enough familiarity, there will be no recognition decision and the person will not realize that he or she had seen that person before. (Read et al., 1990).

Source monitoring is defined as the set of processes that are involved in making attributions about the origins of memories (Johnson, Hashtroudi, &

Lindsay, 1993). A source is a set of characteristics that specify the conditions under which a memory is acquired, such as the spatial, temporal, social context, etc. (Johnson et al., 1993). Reality monitoring is the discrimination between memories that originated from internally generated information from memories from externally generated information (Henkel et al., 1998). There are two types of reality monitoring: external source monitoring and internal source monitoring.

A common example of external source monitoring is when one tries to distinguish

10 between memories of statements that were made by person A from those made by person B, or trying to remember who told you a story previously and who had told you a joke. Remembering which actor performed which action can be considered to be a type of external source monitoring (Kersten et al., in press).

Internal source monitoring is displayed when one attempts to discriminate between memories of what one thought from memories of what one said

(Johnson et al., 1993). Memories for perceived events (externally derived memories) tend to include more perceptual, spatial and temporal, semantic, and affective information. Consequently, a memory with many visual and spatial details and very little cognitive operations, such as thoughts, would be judged to have been externally derived (Johnson et al., 1993; Henkel et al., 1998).

When people are under time pressure, severe stress, distraction, or alcohol, there should be a decrease in a person’s abilities to use the reflective process needed to determine the origin of a memory. This would cause an increase in memory conjunction errors and unconscious transference because the source of a memory can become confused, especially when the features of a target memory are typical of the class of memories from another source (Henkel et al., 1998). This is important in eyewitness testimony because when a person is witnessing a crime, he or she is generally under stress, which could cause confusion regarding the source or context of a memory with another. The same would apply to making the identification at the police station, which is also usually accompanied by large amounts of stress.

With the recent increase in unusual trends, such as unnatural hair colors, more and larger tattoos and piercings, and increasingly unusual clothing styles, what happens when a person sees another person with a bizarre feature commit a crime? Does this bizarreness cause that feature to be remembered better at a later date? The bizarre imagery or bizarreness effect occurs when items that are distinctive or unusual in some way are recalled better than those that depict more ordinary events (Macklin & McDaniel, 2005). The effect is most often found when the bizarre and common items are mixed together in one list (McDaniel, Einstein,

DeLosh, May & Brady, 1995; Nicolas & Marchal, 1998; Macklin & McDaniel,

2005).

Most researchers believe that the bizarreness effect is due to either encoding or retrieval mechanisms. Those who believe it is due to encoding mechanisms have proposed a theory of expectation-violation or distinctiveness to explain the phenomenon. Those in the other camp also cite the distinctiveness theory as an explanation. In the studies that have assessed the bizarreness effect, pictures are generally better remembered than the corresponding verbal representations when tested by free recall (Nicolas & Marchal, 1998). This could be because pictures in general engage more of the elaborate encoding processes that are tested by conceptual explicit memory tests, such as free and cued recall. Nelson (1979) suggested in his sensory semantic model that pictures are more memorable because they have sensory codes that are more distinctive than words. This would mean that even if pictures and words represented the same thing, pictures would be remembered better (Nicolas & Marchal, 1998). 12

Therefore, if visual distinctiveness can account for pictures being remembered correctly more often in explicit memory, it should be possible to test directly this idea that bizarre pictures enhance distinctiveness, and therefore, memory

(Nicolas & Marchal, 1998).

The encoding view of the bizarreness effect holds that increased processing at encoding of bizarre items, either due to the relative distinctiveness of the items or to expectation-violation highlights and calls attention to the differences between bizarre and common items (Merry, 1980; Wollen & Cox,

1981, McDaniel et al., 2005). This is expected to occur even when the processing time for each item is equated by the experimenter. This greater encoding then enables better recall by encoding more features for the bizarre items than the common ones (McDaniel et al, 2005).

A second explanation for the bizarreness effect involves the relative distinctiveness of an item (McDaniel et al., 1995; Davidson et al., 2000). An item’s distinctiveness can be determined in two ways. One of them is in relation to the local context (what else is around the item) or learning environment. An example of this would be a Great Dane at a cat show. The bizarre item would of course be the Great Dane because it is out of context. It is a dog surrounded by cats, and a Great Dane is also dramatically different in size than cats. The second way an item can be judged in distinctiveness is in relation to one’s prior memory or knowledge. An example of this would be seeing an animal with only three legs, when one’s memory of that animal was one in which there were four

13 legs (McDaniel et al., 1995). The distinctiveness of an item is essentially determined by its relation to other items.

Items that are judged to be distinctive in some way are believed to direct the viewer’s attention toward those items, especially when they are in a context that contains mostly common items (Davidson et al., 2000). Bizarre items, because they depict unusual object relations are considered to be more distinctive than common images and share fewer features with those common items with respect to one's prior knowledge and memory (McDaniel et al., 1995).

The distinctiveness view also posits that bizarre items are only functionally distinctive when they occur in the context of common items. Evidence exists that shows that memory for these bizarre items is inversely related to the proportion of bizarre items in the lists, which would mean that memory varies with the degree of local distinctiveness (Hirshman et al., 1989; Kroll & Tu, 1988, McDaniel et al., 1995). For this to occur, however, local distinctiveness cannot be the only measure of distinctiveness that can be important. If this was so, then bizarre and common items would be equally distinctive in mixed lists. Hunt and Elliott (1980) proposed that mixing bizarre and common items in the same list affects the degree to which participants notice and encode the unusual and distinctive properties of the bizarre items (McDaniel et al., 1995). Schmidt’s (1991) incongruity theory is similar in some ways to the distinctiveness view. This theory says that at encoding, an attentional response occurs when an event is compared with information that is active in working memory and the event is incongruous, or shares few features with the active information. The attentional 14 response, also called noticing, can then orient or direct the participant toward perceiving and remembering the nature of the incongruity of the item (McDaniel et al., 1995). In mixed lists, therefore, the resulting incongruity causes increased attention and encoding of the bizarre features. However, McDaniel et al. (1995) found that the memory for the serial order of items in mixed lists is not impaired in free recall as follows logically from this theory. If one assumes that focusing on the bizarre and distinctive features of the items would disrupt encoding of the serial order of items, then memory for that order should be lower in mixed lists of bizarre and common items. When this assumption was tested, however, there was actually a slight increase in the memory for the serial order of the items.

Hirshman et al (1989) posited that surprise reactions to bizarre sentences underlie bizarreness effects. According to this view, bizarre items contradict a person's expectations and cause a startle response. This startle response then stimulates a more elaborate processing of the items and increases the orientation to general contextual cues. The resulting increased association between the bizarre items and the general contextual cues is believed to be particularly useful for retrieving these items (McDaniel et al., 1995; Davidson,

Larson, Luo, & Burden, 2000). Surprise reactions to bizarre sentences may be enhanced in mixed lists because common sentences provide a background for contrast (McDaniel et al., 1995; Davidson et al., 2000). It could also be due to an attempt to clarify the significance of that item, or to make sense of the item in some way. This would cause more extensive processing occurs of that item than of common ones. Regardless, the appearance of a bizarre item is more 15 unexpected in mixed lists than in unmixed lists. This view has not been supported by studies, however. McDaniel et al (1995) found that even telling participants that some of the sentences that they would be viewing would have bizarre parts, which would eliminate the startle response, did not diminish the bizarreness effect. They also attempted to increase the surprise reactions of the participants by incorrectly cueing them as to the nature of the item, either bizarre or common. In the condition where participants were told incorrectly that a bizarre item was common before viewing that item, recall was actually lower. If the expectation-violation view is correct, then there should have been higher recall due to the higher amounts of surprise (McDaniel et al., 1995). The authors then posited that the surprise reactions were arousing in some way and therefore decreased attention rather than increasing it. This could have caused the participant to focus on only a narrow part of the item rather than the item as a whole.

A dramatically different point of view is that both distinctiveness and the subsequent recall advantage that is attributed to distinctiveness, is a consequence of retrieval processes. A very important aspect of this view is that item distinctiveness is dependent on its relation to other items in the retrieval set.

Based on the distinctiveness, the bizarre features then depend on that distinctiveness to aid in recall (McDaniel et al, 2005). McDaniel et al. (2005) found no significant bizarreness effects with mixed lists, at encoding, which is contrary to several other experiments. However, when mixed lists were not present at encoding, but only at retrieval, they did find a significant effect. It is 16 possible that distinctiveness may serve a discriminative function in which the target item, in this case the bizarre item, is better identified as a target among other possible candidates at retrieval. Another idea is that in a retrieval set of bizarre and common items, the bizarre nature of the items, using a distinctiveness definition that relates the unusal features to prior knowledge and memory, provides a diagnostic cue that directs access or reconstruction of bizarre items. If bizarre and common items are not mixed at retrieval, then the cues will no longer serve a diagnostic function because they are no longer distinct in relation to the other items (McDaniel et al., 2005).

There has been some support for the retrieval view of the bizarreness effect. McDaniel et al. (2005) found a robust retrieval influence and a more modest encoding one. When the retrieval set was mixed, bizarre items were significantly better recalled than common items, whether they were encoded in a mixed list or not. This shows that the mixing of items is important at retrieval more than at encoding (McDaniel et al, 2005).

Overview of experiment

The present experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that participants would make more conjunction errors when the contexts of the conjunction lures, as well as the bizarre features, were similar. To test this hypothesis, complex events that consisted of four individual actions were filmed.

Two of the events involved actors with one of two bizarre features. The conjunction items were created by manipulating the context and action. 17

Participants are shown video clips of the events at encoding (Session 1) and then return a week later for the recognition test. They are shown more video clips and are asked if they saw a particular actor performing a particular action at

Session 1. According to the source monitoring framework, to the degree that the participant associates the bizarre feature with the context and action rather than the actor, there will be binding errors, because he or she is mistakenly remembering the source of the memory. Unconscious transference theory would predict that when the perpetrator and bystander (in this case the contexts) are similar, then there should be more memory conjunction errors because of the automatic processes involved in attending to the stimuli.

Method

Participants.

Participants were 30 (14 males, 16 females) undergraduates from Florida

Atlantic University, enrolled in a general psychology course and received credit for participating in that class. The ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 22

(M = 19.5, SD= .82). During Session 1 each participant completed a demographics questionnaire (see Appendix B) that asked questions such as health rating, number of medications he or she is currently taking, etc. The average health rating, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest, ranged from

3 to 5 (M = 4.12, SD = .715). The average vocabulary scores ranged from 21 to

33 (number correct out of 40, M = 27.4, SD = 2.83). (See Figure 1 for all demographic data).

Procedure.

Stimuli generation and filming. The events were simulated using the students of an undergraduate class1 as part of an assignment. Each person generated four events, with each involving four people who would perform an individual action that would be part of a greater, continuous event. Each event also had at least six proposed actions. All events and actions were then compiled, and the events that were similar were combined. These events and actions were then rated by the class. Each person rank-ordered each event from

1 to 25, with 1 being their most favorite and 25 their least. Within each event, the individual actions were also ranked, with 1 again being the favorite and 6 the least. All the rankings were then averaged and the top 18 events and top four actions in each event were chosen. The final 18 events were paired (Event 1 with

Event 2, etc.) in order to create the conjunction and new action items that are shown at retrieval.

An example of one of the final events is playing Monopoly. A group of four women, Actors 1-4 (or Actors 5-8, because the events were paired), walk into the room; one of the women is carrying the game. Actor 1 then opens the game and sets it up. Actor 2 passes out the money, Actor 3 rolls the dice, and Actor 4 sets

1 The class was the Research Methods class from Florida Atlantic University

up hotels on a property. Then, as a group, the game is put away and everyone

leaves. (For a complete list of events, see Appendix A). Two of the events

included actors who had one of two unique and bizarre features, either blue hair

or a facial tattoo. These two events were paired together during filming to create

a Same Context and a Different Context event. The Same Context event is one

where an action is performed by two different people, both with the same bizarre

feature. For example, in the gardening scene, at encoding Actor 2 is seen

wearing a blue wig and picking a flower. At retrieval, Actor 3 (who had been seen

raking mulch previously, without the bizarre feature) would be seen picking a

flower, this time with the blue hair.

SAME CONTEXT Encoding Retrieval Event 1 In the Garden e1a1p1: Put on gardening gloves e1a1p1: Put on gardening gloves Old Event e1a2p2: Pick flower (colored hair) e1a2p3: Pick flower (colored hair) Conj. Same e1a3p3: Rake mulch (no colored hair) e1a3p6: Rake mulch (no tattoo) Conj. Diff. e1a4p4: Sweep the Gazebo e1a5p4: Water Flowers New Action

Event 2 Presentation e1a1p5: Turn on the lights e1a1p5: Turn on the lights Old Event e1a2p6: Pass out papers (tattoo) e1a2p7: Pass out papers (tattoo) Conj. Same e1a3p2: Draw graph on board (no e1a3p7: Draw graph on board (no tattoo) colored hair) Conj. Diff. e1a4p8: Close the blinds e1a5p8: Move to next slide New Action

The Different Context event works under the same principle, but an actor

from one event was seen performing an action from another event. Using the

same garden example, Actor 6 was seen at encoding passing out papers for a

presentation, with no bizarre feature. At retrieval, Actor 6 was seen raking mulch, 20

and with colored hair. Actor 3 had previously been shown raking the mulch in the

garden with colored hair.

DIFFERENT CONTEXT Encoding Retrieval Event 1 In the Garden e1a1p1: Put on gardening gloves e1a1p1: Put on gardening gloves Old Event e1a2p2: Pick flower (no tattoo) e1a2p3: Pick flower (no colored hair) Conj. Same e1a3p3: Rake mulch (colored hair) e1a3p6: Rake mulch (colored hair) Conj. Diff. e1a4p4: Sweep the Gazebo e1a5p4: Watering can New Action

Event 2 Presentation e1a1p5: Turn on the lights e1a1p5: Turn on the lights Old Event e1a2p6: Pass out papers (no colored hair) e1a2p7: Pass out papers (no tattoo) Conj. Same e1a3p7: Draw graph on board (tattoo) e1a3p2: Draw graph on board (tattoo) Conj. Diff. e1a4p8: Close the blinds e1a5p8: Move to next slide New Action

The Old items are items that show the same actor performing the same

action at retrieval that was seen at encoding. The Conjunction Same Context

items show an actor performing a different action than before, but still in the

same event. For example, using the Monopoly event above, Actor 3 would, at

encoding, be shown rolling the dice but at retrieval handing out money. The

context is the same (i.e. the game), but the action is different. The Conjunction

Different Context item follows the same principle, but the actor performs two

different actions that are part of two different events. Again, using the Monopoly

example, which is paired with a picnic, Actor 6 is seen at encoding handing out

money in Monopoly but at retrieval they are shown peeling and eating a banana

at the picnic. The New Action item is when an actor performs an action that was

not seen performed by anyone at encoding. In the Monopoly example, Actor 8 is

shown at encoding setting up hotels and at retrieval getting a ―Chance‖ card. An

example of the schema, using the aforementioned examples, follows:

Encoding Retrieval Event 1 Picnic in the field

e1a1p1: Laying the blanket e1a1p1: Laying the blanket Old Event

e1a2p2: Putting food on blanket e1a2p3: Putting food on the blanket Conj. Same

e1a3p3: Peeling banana e1a3p6: Peeling banana Conj. Diff.

e1a4p4: Throwing Frisbee e1a5p4: Packing to leave New Action

Event 2 Playing Monopoly

e1a1p5: Opening/Setting up game e1a1p5: Setting up game Old Event

e1a2p6: Handing out money e1a2p7: Handing out money Conj. Same e1a3p7: Rolling the dice e1a3p2: Rolling the dice Conj. Diff.

e1a4p8: Putting up hotels e1a5p8: Chance Card New Action

Participants were randomly divided into two conditions, Condition A and

Condition B. Condition A saw, at Session 1, events from the Encoding column of

the above schema, and at Session 2 received conjunction and new action items

from the retrieval column. Condition B was the opposite; at Session 1 they saw

events from the Retrieval column above and at Session 2 received conjunction

and new action items from the Encoding column. The bizarre feature events were

manipulated between subjects. Condition A saw the Same Context events at

encoding and retrieval and Condition B saw either Same Context and Different

Context at encoding and retrieval, decided randomly.

Encoding. Subjects were shown 18 continuous events, with each event

having four individual actions and each performed by female undergraduate

22 actors, and were informed that they would be taking a memory test in the future.

The videos were shown on a 17-inch computer monitor, with each individual action lasting between 5 and 35 seconds, and the event sequences from between 45 seconds and 2 minutes. The events were shown in a random order in order to counterbalance and to avoid any order effects. After seeing these 18 events, each participant is given a demographics questionnaire, asking questions such as age, health rating, education, etc. After completing this questionnaire, each participant takes a 40 question vocabulary test. A word is presented on screen, along with four possible choices. The participant is asked to choose the word that most closely resembles the correct definition of the word.

Retrieval. One week later the participants return to take the memory test and are shown clips of the individual actions. At this time there are 18 old items,

18 Conjunction Same Context items, 18 Conjunction Different Context Items, and

18 New Action items for each condition. Each participant sees a random order of these items, in the form of short video clips, once again ranging from 5 to 35 seconds. After seeing each clip, the subject is asked whether they saw ―this person performing this action in the first session‖. Once they answer yes or no, they are asked to rate their confidence in their answer. They choose between

―just guessing‖, ―pretty sure‖, or ―absolutely sure‖.

Results

“Yes” Responses

Yes responses to non-bizarre items

A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether there was a significant difference in the proportion of ―yes‖ responses (a ―yes‖ response indicates that the participant believed that he or she had seen that actor and action combination at encoding, or Session 1) to Old,

Conjunction Same Context, Conjunction Different Context, or New Action items.

The analysis of the responses revealed that there was a significant effect of item type on participant’s responses, F (3, 87) = 96.823, MSE = .019, p < .001.

Post-hoc analyses to determine where the significant differences between the proportions of ―yes‖ responses (Figure 1) occur were then conducted. A

Tukey Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) reveals that participants responded

―yes‖ to Old items (M=.76, SD=.175) significantly more than any other item type.

Participants also responded ―yes‖ to Conjunction Same Context items (M=.38,

SD=.156) more often than to Conjunction Different Context (M=.28, SD=.172) and New Action (M=.19, SD=.135) items, and to Conjunction Different Context items more often than to New Action items. As hypothesized, there were more conjunction errors made when responding to Conjunction Same Context items than to any other item type.

Yes responses to bizarre items

Another repeated measures ANOVA was conducted, this time with the bizarre items. The ANOVA reveals that there is a significant difference between the number of yes responses to each item type, F (3, 87) = 16.677, MSE = .098, p < .001.

Post-hoc analyses to determine where the significant differences between the proportions of ―yes‖ responses (Figure 2) occur were then conducted. A

Tukey HSD reveals that participants responded ―yes‖ to Old items (M=.73,

SD=.341) significantly more than any other item type. Participants also responded ―yes‖ to Conjunction Same Context items (M=.48, SD=.359) more often than to New Action (M=.17, SD=.33) items, and to Conjunction Different

Context items more often than to New Action items. Interestingly, however, participants did not respond more to Conjunction Same Context than to

Conjunction Different Context (M=.42, SD=.349). The results do not quite follow the hypothesis, as there was no significant different between yes responses to

Conjunction Same Context and Conjunction Different Context bizarre items.

There were, however, more yes responses to Conjunction Same Context than

New Action, which was hypothesized.

Confidence Data

In the recall session (Session 2) each participant was shown a video clip and was then asked whether he or she had seen that actor and action combination at Session 1. They were then asked to rate their confidence in their

25 response (1=just guessing, 2=pretty sure, 3=absolutely sure). The average confidence ratings for ―yes‖ responses were computed by dividing the confidence ratings for yes responses by the number of yes responses for each item type

(see Figure 2).

Non-bizarre items

A repeated measures ANOVA was again conducted to determine whether participants were significantly more confident on any one item type. The analysis revealed that there was a significant difference F (3, 75) = 12.852, MSE = .140, p

< .001, indicating that participants were more confident when responding to one type over another (see Fig. 3).

Post-hoc analysis was done to determine on which item type participants were more confident in their responses. A Tukey HSD revealed that participants were more confident when responding to Old items (M=2.48, SD=.387) than to

Conjunction Same Context (M=2.1, SD=.470), Conjunction Different Context

(M=.214, SD=.647), or to New Action items (M=1.85, SD=.644). Participants were less confident when responding to Conjunction Same Context items than to either Conjunction Different Context or to New Action items.

Bizarre items

.257, p = .311, indicating that participants were not significantly more confident when responding to one type over another (see Figure 4).

Discussion

Yes Responses

Non-bizarre items

The results presented here support our hypothesis that there would be more memory conjunction errors made when the context of the events were similar, as seen by the significantly more "yes" responses to Conjunction Same

Context items than to Conjunction Different Context items. This finding shows that there is not merely a case of mistaken identity that occurs when conjunction errors are made. If this was the case, then there would be equal numbers of conjunction errors to all item types, instead of more in response to the

Conjunction Same Context items.

Although the results show that familiarity is being used more often than recall-to-reject, this is not always the case. There were significantly more "yes" responses made to Old items than to any other type of item, which shows that participants were using recollection to remember that they had previously seen that pairing of the features. There were fewer "yes" responses to Conjunction

Different Context and New Action items than to Conjunction Same Context items, most probably because the Conjunction Different Context and New Action items elicit less familiarity than do the Conjunction Same Context items, which could be indicative of a recall-to-reject strategy for the Conjunction Different Context items.

These results argue against the unconscious transference hypothesis as proposed by Ross et al., (1994), which says that to the degree that the actors are similar determines whether a person will incorrectly identify an innocent person as a perpetrator. In this experiment we did not manipulate actor similarity, so the actors were no more similar in appearance than one would encounter by going to a shopping mall, but because all the actors were females, a case could be made that the actors were similar enough in appearance for unconscious transference to occur. However, even if that case was made, the results show that there was not merely mistaken identity at work here.

What was manipulated in terms of similarity was the context of each event. Due to this manipulation, there were significantly more "yes" responses to

Conjunction Same Context items than there were to Conjunction Different

Context items, which means that participants were using the context to identify an actor rather than the action. This does support the unconscious transference theory that was proposed by Ross et al. (1994). Because the contexts were the same in some of the items, it is possible that the participants were using the context as a cue and did then misidentify the actor, not based on the actor’s similarity to another actor, but to the similarity of the context as compared to another. Participants who had seen one actor performing two separate actions

(one at encoding) and one at retrieval within the same event (i.e. context), were more likely to misidentify that person later on. In eyewitness testimony, this implies that a witness who has seen two different people, one the suspect and one an innocent bystander, performing two different actions in a similar place, is

28 more likely to confuse the two people, and is at a greater risk for identifying the wrong person.

The source monitoring framework predicts that if a person associates an actor to the context that he or she performed an action in rather than to the action that the person performed, then there will be more conjunction errors because the context will be the cue to remember the actor rather than the action. In this experiment, the participants could have bound the actor with the context, which would explain the higher number of "yes" responses to the Conjunction Same

Context items rather than to the Conjunction Different Context or the New Action items.

Bizarre items

The results for the bizarre items were not quite as hypothesized.

Participants made more conjunction errors when the bizarre items were introduced, regardless of the context of the event, as seen by the significantly more ―yes‖ responses to the Conjunction Same Context and the Conjunction

Different Context items but not to either one of them over the other.

Although we did not manipulate actor similarity except in terms of the bizarre feature, it is possible that the unconscious transference effect is occurring with the bizarre items. It is conceivable that participants used the blue hair and facial tattoos, as well as the gender of all the actors, to perceive the similarity of each actor to another as much greater than we had intended. Even if this was the

29 case, the lack of a similar number of conjunction errors to all item types does not indicate a case of mistaken identity.

The context and bizarre features of each event were manipulated to induce a similarity effect. Even with this manipulation there were not significantly more ―yes‖ responses to Conjunction Same Context than to Conjunction Different

Context events. This could indicate that the participants were using only the bizarre features to identify the actor, rather than either the action or the context.

This would imply that an eyewitness who saw two different people, one the suspect and one a bystander, both having the same or a similar bizarre feature, performing different actions would be more likely to misidentify the bystander as the suspect later on. It would not be necessary for the two people to even be in the same area or even areas that were similar to each other in some way.

The results do follow the expected course from the literature of the phenomenon. The bizarre features do seem to be remembered better, even though they did not seem to aid in the recollection of the actor. The items were shown in a mixed format, so that the participants were shown both bizarre and common items in the same list. This format has been shown to produce the bizarreness effect in a more reliable fashion (McDaniel et al, 1995; Nicolas &

Marchal, 1998; Macklin & McDaniel, 2005).

Confidence Ratings

Non-bizarre items

Because confidence is an important factor in whether a jury believes an eyewitness in a criminal trial, it is necessary to analyze how confident people are when making an identification. Participants were significantly more confident when responding to Old items than they were to any other item type. Those witnesses who are more confident in their identifications are generally more confident (Lindsay, Read, & Sharma, 1998), which, when the recall-to-reject strategy is used, people are more accurate in their responses. Because Old items are in most cases judged using recollection that participants were most confident in response to these items would be expected.

Even though participants were the most confident in response to the Old items, they were still ―pretty sure‖ when responding to all other item types. This is troubling because even though their responses were wrong, participants were still confident that they had made the correct responses. In criminal trials, it is usually the most confident witnesses that are the most convincing to jurors.

Although participants were the most confident when giving the correct response, they were almost just as confident when giving wrong answers. This is most likely due to familiarity. It is expected that a person would be just as confident when relying on familiarity as they are when using recollection, because the familiarity elicited would be high enough to convince them that they had previously seen that combination of items.

Bizarre items

The confidence data is interesting for the bizarre features. Participants were not significantly more confident for any one item type over another. They were, however, still pretty confident overall. The average of all of the confidence ratings for all of the bizarre items combined is 2.44, which is still very confident.

The high and similar levels of confidence for each item type are most likely due to the familiarity that is induced by the bizarre features.

Conclusions

It is apparent from this experiment that memory conjunction errors can be created in the laboratory, and that they can be similar to real-life experiences.

Because events that are realistic and common occurrences were used, they are more likely to create conjunction errors than other items that have been used previously (words, drawings, etc.) to test binding errors in memory. Because an eyewitness is more likely to focus on an unusual characteristic of the person they are trying to remember, by including these features in this experiment, we can determine that this may not be the best mechanism for identifying a suspect.

When an actor is seen performing two separate actions in similar contexts, the probability of their being misidentified by a witness increases due to source monitoring deficits or to the phenomenon of unconscious transference. Even when the contexts are not similar but the two people have similarly bizarre features, the probability of their being misidentified due to the eyewitness focusing on the characteristic rather than the action and the face, increases and

32 can lead to more false arrests. This is an area that needs to be addressed in the legal system. In future research, it may be helpful to include male actors in order to increase the realistic nature of the events. Doing this may help to prevent future cases where innocent people are misidentified by eyewitnesses and are subsequently convicted for crimes that they have not committed.

Table 1

Participant Characteristics

Mean SD Minimum Maximum

Age 19.5 .82 18 22

Education 12.45 .824 12 15

Health 4.12 .715 3 5

Medications .10 .403 0 2

Vocabulary 27.37 2.83 21 33 Notes: Education: number of years of education. Health: self-reported health rating on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Medications: number of prescription medications currently taking. Vocabulary: number correct out of 40.

Table 2

Proportion of Yes Responses by Item Type—Non-Bizarre Items

Item Type Mean SD N

Old Items .758 .175 30

Conjunction Same .381 .156 30 Context

Conjunction .283 .172 30 Different Context

New Action .187 .135 30

Table 3

Proportion of Yes Responses by Item Type—Bizarre Items

Item Type Mean SD N

Old Items .733 .34 30

Conjunction Same .483 .359 30 Context

Conjunction .416 .349 30 Different Context

New Action .166 .33 30

Table 4

Average Confidence Ratings for Yes Responses by Item Type—Non-Bizarre Items

Item Type Mean SD N

Old Items 2.49 .374 30

Conjunction Same 2.06 .446 30 Context

Conjunction 2.15 .615 29* Different Context

New Action 1.85 .632 27*

* N= 29 and 27 for Conjunction Different Context and New Action, respectively. 1 and 3 participants did not make a confidence rating for these items, and were not included in the analysis.

Table 5

Average Confidence Ratings for Yes Responses by Item Type—Bizarre Items

Item Type Mean SD N

Old Items 2.35 .568 27*

Conjunction Same 2.36 .774 22* Context

Conjunction 2.17 .73 20* Different Context

New Action 2.21 .566 7* * N=27, 22, 20, 7 for Old, Conjunction Same Context, Conjunction Different Context, and New Action items. 3, 8, 10, and 23 participants did not make confidence ratings for these items, respectively, and were not included in the analysis.

Figure Captions

Figure 1. Average number of ―yes‖ responses to each item type, and does not include the bizarre items. In response to the question ―Did you see this person perform this action in the first part of the experiment?‖

Figure 2. Average number of ―yes‖ responses to each item type, and does include the bizarre items. In response to the question ―Did you see this person perform this action in the first part of the experiment?‖

Figure 3. Average confidence ratings for each item type, not including the bizarre items. In response to being asked, ―How confident are you in your answer?‖ Three choices were given: ―just guessing‖, which was given a value of 1, ―pretty sure‖, given a value of 2, and ―absolutely sure‖, given a value of 3.

Figure 4. Average confidence ratings for each item type, and including the bizarre items. In response to being asked, ―How confident are you in your answer?‖ Three choices were given: ―just guessing‖, which was given a value of 1, ―pretty sure‖, given a value of 2, and ―absolutely sure‖, given a value of 3.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Appendix A

List of events and actions

Event 1- Picnic in the field Event 10- Gym Action 1- Laying the blanket Action1- Walks on treadmill Action 2- Putting food on the blanket Action 2- Do sit-ups Action 3- Peeling banana Action 3- Use exercise bike Action 4- Throwing a Frisbee Action 4- Lift weights Action 5- Packing to leave Action 5- Drink water Event 2- Playing Monopoly Event 11- Dining Hall Action 1- Opening/setting up game Action 1- Get tray Action 2- Handing out money Action 2- Eat apple Action 3- Rolling the dice Action 3- Fill drink Action 4- Putting up hotels Action 4- Pick up cookies Action 5- Chance card Action 5- Make salad at the salad bar Event 3- Library Event 12- Riding a horse Action 1- Taking notebook from the bag Action 1- Taking the horse out Action 2- Typing a paper Action 2- Greeting Action 3- Dropping books Action 3- Grooming Action 4- Photocopying Action 4- Riding away Action 5- Crumpling paper Action 5- Putting the horse back Event 4- At the pool Event 13- Leaving on trip Action 1- Cannon ball Action1- Picking up suitcase Action 2- Sunbathing Action 2- Packing the car Action 3- Getting out/drying off Action 3- Getting directions Action 4- Listening to music Action 4- Leaving Action 5- Returning beach ball Action 5- Forgot something Event 5- Birthday Event 14- Playground Action 1- Wrapping presents Action 1- Go through the tunnel Action 2- Putting up decorations Action 2- Swing Action 3- Blow up balloon with a balloon pump Action 3- Go on monkey bars Action 4- Lighting candles Action 4- Go on seesaw Action 5- Swinging at piñata Action 5- Go down slide Event 6- Starbucks Event 15- Car wash Action 1- Sipping coffee Action 1- Getting ready Action 2- Using a laptop Action 2- Washing the car Action 3- Reading the newspaper Action 3- Rinsing the car Action 4- Paying at the register Action 4- Waxing the car Action 5- Eating desert Action 5- Detailing Event 7- Baking brownies Event 16- At a restaurant Action 1- Getting started Action 1- Talking on cell phone Action 2- Putting mix in a pan Action 2- Being seated Action 3- Cleaning pan Action 3- Reading the menu Action 4- Taking pan out of the oven Action 4- Buttering bread Action 5- Eating the brownies Action 5- Paying Event 8- At the beach Event 17- In the garden Action 1- Setting up the umbrella Action 1- Put on gardening gloves Action 2- Taking of shoes Action 2- Pick flower/weed Action 3- Swimming Action 3- Rake mulch Action 4- Building a sandcastle Action 4- Sweep the gazebo Action 5- Finding a seashell Action 5- Water plants Event 9- Baseball game Event 18- Presentation Action 1- Throwing a ball Action 1- Turn on lights Action 2- Batting Action 2- Pass out papers Action 3- Catching the ball Action 3- Draw graph on board Action 4- Returning to home Action 4- Close the blinds Action 5- Base coach waving player on Action 5- Go to the next slide

Appendix B

Demographics Questions

1. In what year were you born? ______

2. How many years of education do you have? ______

3. Are you male or female? ______

4. What is your ethnic group? 1. Hispanic or Latino 2. Not Hispanic or Latino

5. What is your race? 1. American Indian or Alaskan Native 2. Asian 3. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander 4. Black 5. White 6. Other ______

6. How would you rate your health at the present time? (Circle one) 1. Poor 2. Fair 3. O.K. 4. Good 5. Excellent

7. How many prescription medications are you currently taking? ______

8. Have you ever been treated for high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease? ______

9. Did you have any difficulty seeing any of the items during this experiment? ______

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