Facing away from the interviewer: Evidence of little benefit to eyewitnesses' memory performance

Abstract

Averting gaze from another person's face generally improves cognitive performance, yet, little is known about how witnesses' gaze direction affects their recall during investigative interviews. Here, participants witnessed a video-recorded incident, and were interviewed via free recall and closed questions following a short delay. In Experiment 1, participants either faced the interviewer or faced away during the interview. In Experiment 2, alongside this manipulation, the interviewer also either faced the witness or faced away. In Experiment 3, witness gaze direction was manipulated alongside rapport-building. In Experiment 4, the effect of facing away was directly compared with that of eye-closure. Mini meta-analysis of all four experiments showed that the effect of witness gaze direction on memory performance was minimal. Furthermore, neither aversion of interviewer's gaze nor rapport-building magnified this effect. Added to the cumulative literature on eyewitness gaze aversion, these findings afford better estimates of the likely size of these effects.

Interviewing in virtual environments: Towards understanding the impact of rapport-building behaviours and retrieval context on eyewitness memory

“…Accordingly, our findings support H 1 and are similar to the results of research conducted by others (e.g., Bethel et al, 2013 ; Fängström et al, 2017 ; Hamilton et al, 2017 ; Nash et al, 2014 ; Taylor & Dando, 2018 ). However, our findings add to the emerging literature on cognition in VEs where information gathering is a primary goal (e.g., Baccon et al, 2019 ; Hope et al, 2011 ; Nash et al, 2014 ; Nash et al, 2020 ; Sun, 2014 ). The importance of social context is increasingly recognized in applied cognition research (Fisher et al, 2011 ; Powell et al, 2005 ; Taylor & Dando, 2018 ).…”

“…Some research has remotely manipulated rapport, and rapport has been investigated in face-to-face video mediated contexts and during the remote production of facial composite sketches (e.g., Kuivaniemi-Smith et al, 2014 ; Nash et al, 2014 ; Nash et al, 2020 ; Sun, 2014 ). Although markedly different interview environments, the findings are encouraging, suggesting that rapport can be built remotely, and where this occurs interviewees reveal more sensitive information, and the accuracy of witness accounts improves versus where rapport was absent.…”

Introduction to the special issue. Answering questions raised by a well‐known Italian collective child abuse case

“…Linked to investigation in eyewitness psychology are two more papers. One (Nash, Ridout, & Nash, 2020) examines whether facing away from the interviewer helps the accuracy of a witness report, as suggested before. Facing away from the interviewer was found in previous studies to help reports.…”