“It was not mentioned”: Improving responses to unanswerable questions using retrieval instructions.

Abstract

Previous research shows that posing many questions about an event may lead to asking questions about unwitnessed details and that people sometimes provide substantive and erroneous answers to them. Therefore, two experiments investigated the role of the problem-solving and judgment processes, which are unrelated to memory access, in improving responding to unanswerable questions. Experiment 1 compared the effects of a brief retrieval training with the effects of an instruction to increase the criterion of reporting. As expected, the two manipulations had different effects on participants' answers, which demonstrates that training can do more than just instigate more cautious responding. However, we found evidence against our prediction that an enhancement in metacognitive ability underlies improved responding after training. Experiment 2 investigated, for the first time, the role of constant awareness that questions can be unanswerable and that such questions should be rejected. We compared the effects of training with the effects of a small change in response format that ensured such awareness. The effects of the two manipulations were similar, which supports our prediction that the constant awareness of unanswerable questions is a key factor behind improved responding. Practical implications for the eyewitness memory domain are discussed. Public Significance StatementIn eyewitness investigations, interviewers may unknowingly ask questions about details which were not present or visible in the event. Such unanswerable questions are problematic because interviewees only rarely spontaneously state that the questioned information was not present in the event, and sometimes provide substantive and erroneous answers. In the present study, we demonstrated two efficient ways of improving responding to unanswerable questions, using instructions and techniques which can be easily applied at the time of retrieval or immediately before.

Double misinformation and eyewitness performance: An experimental replication

“…Individuals may substantially differ in their understanding of the memory task and approach it with very different assumptions (Krogulska et al, 2020). Previous research shows that how participants understand the nature of the memory task, and what they see as possible answers—solutions to this task—can strongly influence their performance (Blank, 1998; Blank et al, 2019; Greenspan & Loftus, 2022; Krogulska et al, 2020; Skopicz‐Radkiewicz et al, 2023). In misinformation effect studies, participants are typically left with an inadequate task representation, having been led to believe that the post‐event material was an adequate account of an original event, and that details presented in it should therefore be consistent with original details (Oeberst & Blank, 2012).…”