MISLEADING SUGGESTIONS CAN IMPAIR EYEWITNESSES ABILITY TO REMEMBER EVENT DETAILS

The hypothesis that misleading suggestions can impair recollection was supported in a study inspired by Jacoby and Kelley's (1988) "logic of opposition" and Lindsay and Johnson's (1989a) hypotheses about source memory. Tendency to report suggested details was set in opposition to ability to remember their source by telling subjects not to report anything from the narrative. Conditions were manipulated so that in the high- but not the low-discriminability condition it was easy to remember the suggestions and their source. At test, subjects were told (truthfully) that any information in the narrative relevant to the questions was wrong. Suggested details were more often reported on misled than control items in the low- but not the high-discriminability condition, yet suggestions impaired accurate recall of event details in both conditions.