Forensic,clinical and everyday remembering: Exploring the role of perceived audience in changes across autobiographical memory recollections

Abstract

Contradictions and other changes across recollections are interpreted negatively in some settings. This may be problematic because who we share our memories with may affect what we recollect. In our research, we used a retelling paradigm for autobiographical memory to investigate how perceived audience influences consistency of repeated personal memory accounts. Participants free-recalled memories of four autobiographical events either to an imagined police officer, psychologist or friend. One week later, they recalled the same events again to the same imagined audience. Memory accounts changed across recollections, with most participants making omissions, additions and contradictions. Some changes varied across conditions. Participants in the friend condition were least consistent in amount of information provided. Participants in the police officer condition contradicted themselves on details about people present. However, overall audience context did not reliably influence consistency of accounts, rather changes were common. Findings broaden our understanding of social influence on autobiographical memory.

Keywords

audience context autobiographical memory consistency contradictions functions of autobiographical memory

Contradictions and other changes across autobiographical memory accounts can be interpreted differently depending on the setting. In legal investigations, changes across testimony can raise suspicions of deception (Strömwall and Granhag, 2003), and lead to false convictions (Wells, 1993). In contrast, in clinical therapeutic settings, changes across personal narratives may signify positive progress as patients reach more helpful interpretations of their past (Bond and Dryden, 2005; White and Epston, 1990). In everyday conversations, changes across retellings may not be as closely monitored as recollections are shared among friends (Hirst and Echterhoff, 2008, 2012). These varying interpretations influence the information individuals provide.

Effects of audience context on recall

It is well documented that general context, such as environmental cues or choice of language spoken, influences accessibility and recall of memory (Marian and Neisser, 2000; Smith and Vela, 2001). Research suggests that individuals tailor the information they provide to suit their audiences’ attitudes and knowledge (Echterhoff et al., 2005, 2009) a term coined the ‘audience tuning effect’ (Higgins, 1992). Specifically, individuals may recall details to match the perceived characteristics and goals of the audience. For example, Norenzayan and Schwarz (1999) found that when participants were asked to explain why a character depicted in a story committed a crime, they gave more situational attributes to a researcher who was perceived to be social scientist, whereas they provided more dispositional, character-focused attributes to a researcher who was perceived to be a personality psychologist. In another study, Hyman (1994) found that when participants were asked to tell everything they remembered about a story they had read, participants who were paired with the researcher were more likely to provide a consistent narrative retelling of the story. Participants paired in discussion with a peer tended to provide more evaluative detail, centering on opinions, affect and evaluations.

However, an important question to consider is whether audience influences recall for personally experienced events, and not just memory for fictional stories and descriptions. Audience tuning may be particularly relevant to autobiographical remembering because there is a wide array of information integrated during each recollection.

Autobiographical memory mechanism

Autobiographical memory is complex and unlike other types of memory (Conway and Pelydell-Pearce, 2000; Fivush et al., 2011; Rubin, 1996). It is a knowledge base composed of three types of encoded information: memory for lifetime periods (such as a period in which you lived in a certain neighbourhood), memory for general events that may be made up of multiple specific memories (such as learning to drive a car) and event-specific knowledge (memory for event details, such as what song was playing; Conway and Pelydell-Pearce, 2000). The autobiographical memory mechanism is reconstructive, not reproductive (Conway and Pelydell-Pearce, 2000). Each time a memory is recalled, the individual draws from these three types of encoded information.

A defining feature of autobiographical memory is its narrative structuring necessary for social interaction (Fivush et al., 2011; Nelson and Fivush, 2020). Memories are continually updated as new details are inserted to replace forgotten ones in order to maintain narrative coherence over repeated retellings (Michaelian, 2011; Schacter et al., 2011).

The malleable nature of autobiographical memory has been demonstrated in studies examining consistency of memory accounts across retellings. Details in memories of personal past events change across retellings despite high clarity and confidence in accuracy and despite being often well-rehearsed emotional milestone events (Barnier et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2017; Temler et al., 2020). Even in settings where great significance is placed on consistency, discrepancies can still be present across retellings, such as in forensic settings (Strange et al., 2014) or when interviewing seekers of asylum (Herlihy et al., 2002). Common failures in remembering autobiographical events include memory for temporal details, names, peripheral events and common objects (Cameron, 2010).

One paradigm used to measure the consistency of autobiographical memories is the retelling paradigm for autobiographical memory, drawn from the social contagion paradigm for autobiographical memory, in which participants recall four personally experienced events (such as 18th birthday) on two separate occasions, 7 days apart (as seen in Harris et al., 2017; Temler, 2015; Temler et al., 2020). This paradigm has demonstrated that participants make omissions, additions and contradictions across memory recalls just 1 week apart. The types of changes participants make have been influenced by the elicitation format, aspects of the social interaction and the mere presence and absence of a listener (Temler, 2015; Temler et al., 2020).

Varying goals of autobiographical remembering

Autobiographical memory accounts may vary across separate recollections because in real-world settings, accuracy is only one of the goals when remembering past experiences (Barnier et al., 2008). The goal for accuracy also works alongside other goals, such as generating personal meaning aligned with the individual’s identity (e.g. Bluck et al., 2005), or developing and maintaining relationships through social interaction (e.g. Bluck, 2003).

The literature has proposed several functional models of autobiographical memory (Harris et al., 2014; Rasmussen and Habermas, 2011). One such theory is that there are three main functions of autobiographical memory that contribute to how and why people recall their past: directive, self and social (Bluck, 2003; Bluck and Alea, 2002; Pillemer, 1992b). The directive function of autobiographical memory uses past experiences to problem solve in the future (Bluck, 2003; Pillemer, 1992b). Hence, it is dependent on a certain level of accuracy or correspondence with the past to inform behaviour (Conway, 2005; Conway et al., 2004; Pillemer, 1992a, 2003). The self-function of autobiographical memory encodes and retrieves memories consistent with the coherence of self-identity (Conway et al., 2004). How one remembers their past can be shaped by their goals and perception of their identity in the present (Conway, 2005; Conway and Pelydell-Pearce, 2000). The social function of autobiographical memory is to develop and maintain relationships (Bluck, 2003; Bluck and Alea, 2002; Pillemer, 1992b). More recently, Rasmussen and Habermas (2011) have suggested four functions, with the social function split into two factors addressing the nurturing of existing relationships versus the development of new relationships. Harris et al. (2014) also suggest four classes of memory functions, which they refer to as Reflective, Generative, Ruminative and Social.

Different goals of settings and situations have the potential to consciously or unconsciously activate varying functional needs of remembering past experiences (Pillemer, 2003). Given the nature of forensic settings, with its focus on solving investigations and specific emphasis on accuracy of details, there may be more of a reliance on accuracy or correspondence with the past. In clinical settings, with its emphasis on understanding one self, there may be more reliance on the person’s sense of self-identity. Finally, in everyday friendship settings, with its emphasis on relationship bonding, there may be more reliance on remembering to maintain and build relationships.

The different emphasis of audience context may then interact with the goal-oriented malleable nature of autobiographical memory across recollections.

The current study

More research is needed to understand the effects of audience context on repeated recollections of autobiographical memories. In our study, we varied the role of perceived audience to explore the effects of different applied setting influences on consistency of autobiographical memory accounts elicited across two separate sessions 1 week apart.

This study used the retelling paradigm for autobiographical memory to measure changes across autobiographical memory retellings (consistent with that of Temler (2015)). Participants freely recalled memories from four specific autobiographical events in Session 1 and then again 7 days later in Session 2. Participants were instructed to imagine that they were recalling these memories to a specific audience (either a police officer, psychologist or friend) depending on the condition to which they were randomly assigned. To decrease suspicion of the study aims, participants were also required to complete Clarity, Confidence and Comprehension Rating Scales across both sessions.

The aim of the study was to investigate whether changes in freely recalled accounts across the two sessions varied depending on audience context (police officer, psychologist, friend). Justification for the chosen audience contexts was motivated by the different potential goals of remembering across forensic, clinical, and everyday social setting. Forensic settings, oriented towards solving investigations, clinical settings, emphasising personal meaning and identity, and everyday friendship settings, highlighting relationship bonding, creating positive impressions, or providing entertainment, may all have different interpretations of changes and expectations of accuracy (Barnier et al., 2008; Bond and Dryden, 2005; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Hirst and Echterhoff, 2008; Pillemer, 2003; Strömwall and Granhag, 2003). Across common real-world settings such as forensic, clinical or social settings, individuals would likely directly recall autobiographical memories to individuals like a police officer, psychologist, or friend. The events chosen for this study were recent and personally significant. Research indicates that highly emotional milestone memories, like these, can be as vivid and clear as flashbulb memories of national and shocking events (Rubin and Kozin, 1984), making them suitable for study across different contexts. Changes across autobiographical accounts were measured in changes in word count, number of omissions and additions made, and the number and type of contradictions made.

Based on the research that audience influences individual attitudes and knowledge, and the content of discussion (Echterhoff et al., 2005, 2009; Higgins, 1992; Higgins and Rholes, 1978; Hyman, 1994; Norenzayan and Schwarz, 1999), it was expected that audience context would influence the amount of memory changes across recollections.

Based on the negative interpretation of changes across recollections and goal for accuracy in the forensic setting (Conway, 2005; Conway et al., 2004; Strömwall and Granhag, 2003), we hypothesised that participants in the police officer context would exhibit the least amount of change across recall sessions. Based on the importance of personal meaning and focus on one’s self in the clinical context (Schlegel et al., 2009) and that autobiographical memory is heavily based on coherence with the current goals, motives and self (Conway et al., 2004; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), we hypothesised that participants in the psychologist condition would make more changes across their accounts than in the police officer condition, but would still be fairly consistent as identity was not expected to change drastically within the 7-day period between sessions (Burke, 2006). We predicted that participants in the psychologist context would exhibit more change than those in the police context but less change than those in the friend context. Based on the research that in social settings, autobiographical memory serves to facilitate social bonding by sharing experiences with less focus on the accuracy of information (Barnier et al., 2008; Bluck, 2003; Pillemer, 1992b), recall is expected to be less accuracy focused and more varied. Hence, we predicted that participants in the friend context would be the least consistent across retellings. Finally, based on evidence to suggest that autobiographical memory is subject to change and that individuals contradict themselves on certain details (see, for example, Cameron (2010), Temler et al. (2020), Temler (2015) and Strange et al. (2014)), we expected that participants across all audience contexts would exhibit some level of change across their accounts and make a range of different contradictions.

Method

Participants

Seventy-two undergraduate psychology students from the University of Sydney voluntarily participated in exchange for course credit. Eligibility criteria required that participants were fluent in English. Data for nine participants were excluded; seven due to failure to attend the second session and two due to mistakenly completing the first session twice. Final analysis included data for a total of 63 students (60.3% female and 39.7% male; aged between 17 and 38 (M_age = 20.40, SD = 3.62)).

Based on previous studies on autobiographical memory (Devitt et al., 2016; Drivdahl and Hyman, 2014; Harris et al., 2011, 2017; Temler et al., 2020) and limited sampling resources (Lakens, 2021), the aimed minimum sample size was 60 participants (20 per condition).

Design

The study used a 3 × (2) mixed factorial design. Audience context (police officer, psychologist, friend) was manipulated between participants over two separate recalls (memory accounts at Sessions 1 and 2) within participants. The dependent variables were the following: (1) amount recalled, defined as the number of words used, (2) number of omissions, (3) number of additions, and (4) number of contradictions and (5) type of contradictions.

Materials

Events

Participants recounted four autobiographical events, from a choice of 18th birthday/most recent memorable birthday, driving test, year 12 formal, first HSC exam (Australian final year high school examination used for university admissions), first day at most recent place of employment (paid or volunteer work) and first day of class at university. Previous studies demonstrated that these specific events elicit sufficiently rich and detailed memory accounts (see Barnier et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2017; Temler, 2015; Temler et al., 2020). Events like these are ‘remarkable’ both in the sense of their uniqueness, but also in that people commonly remark on them to others (Cutshall and Yuille, 1989), and they could potentially be recalled to audiences across forensic, clinical and friend contexts. In the single case in which a participant had not experienced an event, or had significantly poor memory for an event, they were asked to describe an alternative autobiographical event such as a recent significant holiday celebration.

Clarity, confidence and comprehension rating scale

The four-item rating scale adopted by Temler (2015) was used after recall of each memory in Session 1. The first three items required participants to rate how clear their memory for the event was on a 10-point scale (where 1 = very vague, 10 = very clear), how confident they were in the details (1 = not at all, 10 = highly) and how comprehensive their account was (where 1 = not comprehensive,10 = very comprehensive). The fourth question asked participants how long ago the event took place (measured in months).

Procedure

The experiment was conducted across two sessions, lasting approximately 25 minutes and 35 minutes, respectively. Sessions were completed either in the laboratory (in-person), with the researcher present, or remotely, outside of the laboratory without the researcher present. Of the 63 participants, 46 participants completed both sessions in-person, 15 completed both sessions remotely, and two completed one session in-person and the second remotely. Variation in experimental setting was due to COVID-19 policy stay-at-home restrictions. All participants completed sessions on the computer using Qualtrics, regardless of whether they completed the session in-person or remotely.

Session 1

The beginning of Session 1 varied slightly depending on whether participants completed the session in the laboratory or remotely. For those completing it in the laboratory, participants were directed by the researcher to a desktop computer upon arrival. For those completing it remotely, participants could access the Qualtrics link through the recruitment advertisement. Participants were told that the study aims to investigate how people think and remember specific autobiographical events from their life.

Once informed consent was obtained, participants answered demographic questions regarding age, gender identity, English fluency and ethnicity.

Participants were then randomly assigned to one of the following three conditions: police officer, psychologist or friend. Instructions varied slightly depending on the condition.

For the police officer condition, participants were instructed:

Imagine you are in an interview with a police officer who is investigating various crimes that occurred during some specific events in your life. Even though you did not witness the crimes, the police officer has asked you to describe your memories of certain specific personally experienced events.

For the psychologist condition, participants were instructed:

Imagine you are attending sessions with a psychologist. The psychologist has asked you to describe your memories of certain specific personally experienced events.

For the friend condition, participants were instructed:

Imagine you and your friend are catching up. You are both reminiscing. Your friend has asked you to describe your memories of certain specific personally experienced events.

Elicitation phase

Following this, all participants were advised that they would be required to describe four specific events. Specific events were defined as unique, single events that occurred at a specific point in time, during 1 day or 1 night.

They were instructed to only recount details of that specific event and to avoid discussing any details from the day before or after the event. They were then provided with the list of the six events they could choose from (as outlined in the ‘Materials’ section), with the instruction to recall everything that they could about the chosen event to their imagined audience (police officer, psychologist, or friend), without feeling the need to make up details or provide information that was highly personal/confidential in nature.

Once participants had selected their first event, they were provided with approximately 5 minutes to type everything they could remember about the event. All participants were given the following instructions and prompts (drawn from Harris et al. (2017) and Temler et al. (2020)):

You will have 5 minutes to type everything you can remember about the event. If the 5 minutes is up before you click continue, this page will automatically time out and continue onto the next section of the study. Everything you have typed will be saved. When you are typing, please keep in mind the following points:

1. What you did from beginning to end during the event.

2. When and what time did the event occur?

3. Sensory impressions, such as, what you saw, heard, smelt, tasted and/or touched during the event and what you or others wore at the event.

4. How you felt during the event.

5. What you thought during the event.

6. Where the event took place.

7. And finally, how you interacted with other people and how other people interacted with you.

After recounting the event, participants completed the Clarity, Confidence and Comprehension Rating Scale. Participants subsequently repeated the same process three more times, for three more events, with additional instruction to not select an event they had written about previously. Once participants completed recounting all four events, they were thanked for their involvement and reminded that they must complete the second session a week later.

Session 2

The beginning of Session 2 varied slightly depending on whether participants completed the session in-person or remotely. For those completing it in-person, participants were directed by the researcher to a desktop computer upon arrival. For those completing it remotely, participants could access the Qualtrics link to the session in an email sent by the researcher. They were given 24 hours to complete it. Condition allocation was the same as in Session 1 for all participants.

Retelling phase

Participants then recounted the same four events they recalled in Session 1 and completed the Clarity, Confidence and Comprehension Rating Scale. Finally, participants were fully debriefed and thanked for their participation.

Coding

A coding template from Temler et al. (2020) was adopted and expanded upon. Data were coded for omissions, additions and contradictions.

Concrete details

Concrete details were defined as single specific details not recalled in one of the accounts (e.g. if in Session 1 the participant recalled ‘I wore a blue dress’ but in Session 1, they recalled ‘I wore a dress’, blue would be defined as an omitted concrete detail).

Idea units

Idea units were defined as sentences or statements which conveyed an idea, thought, concept or general description (e.g. ‘It felt like just another day in class listening to the teacher’). A string of concrete details used to describe a particular notion (that was not recalled in one of the accounts) was also classified as an idea unit (e.g. ‘the corsage he gave me was a beautiful pink and purple exotic flower’ would be defined as one idea unit, if the participant failed to mention anything about a corsage in the other session).

Omissions and additions

Omissions were defined as concrete details or idea units that were recalled in the Session 1 accounts but absent in the Session 2 accounts. Additions were defined as concrete details or idea units that were recalled in the Session 2 accounts but absent in the Session 1 accounts. For additions and omissions, focus was on differences in overall consistency (measured by word count and supported by omissions and additions) rather than the exact verbatim content of omissions and additions. The complexities of autobiographical memory have been noted in previous research (Barnier et al., 2008; Berntsen and Rubin, 2012) and ‘r’ has been utilised for inter-rater reliability in autobiographical memory research (Barnier et al., 2014; Lempert et al., 2020; Ridout et al., 2023).

Total scores for omissions and additions were calculated for each account and we found that inter-rater reliability between Raters 1 and 2 was high for omissions, r(10) = .74, p = .006, and for additions, r(10) = .83, p < .001. Raters 1 and 2 double coded a total of 96 memory accounts across 12 participants.

Contradictions

Contradictions were defined as a discrepancy in concrete details or idea units given in the accounts across the two sessions. Scoring of contradictions was based on when a participant recalled something in Session 2 that was different and discrepant to what they recalled in Session 1. Agreement between Raters 1 and 2 was moderate Cohen’s = .52, p < .001, r(25) = .714, p < .001.

Types of contradictions

Eleven contradiction categories were identified and coded: sensory, location, temporal, quantity, emotion, evaluation, people, action, other memory, changes in probability/certainty and changes in temporal probability/certainty. For descriptions and examples refer to Table 1.

Table 1.

Types of coded contradictions.

Type	Description	Example
Sensory	This referred to discrepancies in what the participant saw, heard, smelled, tasted and/or touched. Details describing objects, clothing and food were included.	In Session 1, a participant recalled ‘I was teaching the kids how to paint a cupcake’. Whereas in Session 2, they recalled ‘I taught the kids to paint pancakes’.
Location	This referred to discrepancies in details related to location or spatial contextual details.	In Session 1, a participant reported that the exam was ‘in the exam hall’. Whereas, in Session 2, they stated it was ‘in the gym’.
Temporal	This referred to discrepancies in details related to temporal experiences. Details describing discrepancies in the exact time, date and/or season were included. Details describing quantities of time spent doing an activity were also included.	In Session 1, a participant explained that their first day at volunteering was on Wednesday. Whereas in Session 2, they recalled it was on Tuesday.
Quantity	This referred to differences in numerical estimations in items, prices or people.	In Session 1, a participant recalled ‘I remember losing my first 40 dollars at that machine’. Whereas in Session 2, they recalled ‘I remember losing my first 50 dollars on this machine’.
Emotion	This referred to conflicting reports in emotional states. This included conflicting reports in the participant’s own emotional state, or in their perception of another person’s.	In Session 1, a participant recalled that they ‘were feeling nervous and scared’. Whereas in Session 2, they recalled, ‘I felt really confident’.
Evaluation	This referred to conflicting evaluations of an event, episode, cause of something or of other people.	In Session 1, a participant described that they woke up exhausted ‘from the hsc and accumulated stress’. Whereas in Session 2, they described the reason for being exhausted was because they had my boyfriend’s formal the night before.
People	This referred to different descriptions of people present.	In Session 1, a participant stated that ‘we went to the nearest petrol station’. Whereas in Session 2, they recalled that it was my brother who went.
Action	This referred to discrepancies in specific actions performed.	In Session 1, a participant recalled that they ‘rode my bike to Balmain’. Whereas in Session 2, they recalled that they ‘walked to Balmain’.
Other memory	This referred to when participants recalled a different memory in the second session.	A participant recalled a completely different birthday in Session 2 than in Session 1.
Change in probability/certainty	This referred to changes in a participant’s level of certainty or the probability that something occurred.	In Session 1, a participant stated that ‘I probably went to the dog park’. Whereas in Session 2, they stated, ‘I then went to the dog park’.
Change in temporal probability/certainty	This referred to changes in the range of time that an event occurred.	In Session 1, a participant stated, ‘the formal started maybe 6:00-7:00 pm’. Whereas in Session 2, they stated, ‘it started at around 6 pm’.

Results

Two-hundred and fifty-two events were elicited over each of the two sessions. A total of 504 typed accounts of these events were analysed for changes. Participants generated memories for four out of the six event options (n = 59 for 18th birthday/most recent memorable birthday, n = 45 for driving test, n = 51 for year 12 formal, n = 43 for first HSC exam, n = 36 for first day at most recent place of employment, n = 17 for first day of class at university). One participant wrote about an alternative event (recent significant holiday celebration).

Preliminary and main analyses were conducted to address the study aim to investigate whether memory changes across retellings was influenced by audience context.

Preliminary analyses

Demographic variables

A series of separate chi-square analyses and one-way univariate Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) were conducted to examine the effect of participant randomisation between audience context. Analysis yielded no significant difference across audience contexts in gender (x² (2, N = 63) = .36, p = .835, whether they spoke another language besides English (x² (2, N = 63) = 1.93, p = .382) and mean age (years; F (2, 60) = 1.33, p = .273).

Events

A series of univariate one-way ANOVAs and correlational analyses revealed no significant differences for event order (i.e. recalled first, second, third, or fourth) or event type (i.e. birthday, driving test, etc) and words recalled, omissions, additions, contradictions, months since the event occurred and clarity, confidence and comprehensive ratings (all ps > .05). As such, analysis centred on total means across all four events.

In-person versus remote

Of the 63 participants, 76.2% completed the experiment in-person in the laboratory and 23.8% completed both sessions remotely. Chi-square analyses revealed no significant difference across the three audience contexts, in whether participants completed the experiment remotely or in the lab, x² (2, N = 63) = .44, p = .804.

A series of univariate one-way ANOVAs were conducted to examine whether there were any differences between participants who completed the experiment in-person and those who completed it remotely. Analysis revealed that in-person participants reported significantly higher clarity across the sessions (M = 6.64, SD = 1.13) than remote participants (M = 5.79, SD = 1.84), F(1, 61) = 4.70, p = .034. In-person participants reported significantly higher comprehension across sessions (M = 6.22, SD = 1.15) than remote participants (M = 5.08, SD = 1.73), F(1, 61) = 8.71, p = .004. In-person participants recalled significantly more words across sessions (M = 192.01, SD = 47.78) than remote participants (M = 158.23, SD = 57.92), F(1, 61) = 5.15, p = .027. And in-person participants made significantly more contradictions (M = 2.96, SD = 1.83) than remote participants (M = 1.87, SD = .99), F(1, 61) = 4.84, p = .032. There were no significant differences between in-person and remote participants on confidence, omissions, additions, behaviour in-between sessions and contradiction types (all ps > .05).

Main analyses

Main analysis centred on total means across all four events. Analysis focused on differences between audience context and sessions in (1) amount recalled, (2) the number of omissions and additions, and (3) the number and type of contradictions.

Amount recalled

Table 2 depicts the mean number of words used to recall each event, across all audience contexts. A 3 (Audience: police, psychologist, friend) × (2) (Recall Session: Sessions 1 and 2) mixed model ANOVA of words recalled yielded a significant main effect of recall session on number of words recalled, F (1, 60) = 4.99, p = .029, η_p² = .077. The analysis revealed that averaged across audience contexts, participants used fewer words in Session 2 than in Session 1 (MD = 8.27, SD = 30.32). There was no significant main effect of audience on number of words recalled, F (2, 60) = 0.13, p = .877, η_p² = .004. There was a significant interaction between recall session and audience, F (2, 60) = 5.19, p = .008, η_p² = .147. Paired samples t-test revealed that participants in the friend context recalled significantly more words in Session 1 than Session 2 (MD = 23.59, SD = 29.15), t(21) = 3.80, p = .001. However, there was no significant difference across sessions in words recalled for participants in both the police officer (t(20) = –.54, p = .60) and psychologist contexts (t(19) = .39, p = .70).

Table 2.

Mean number of words used to describe each event in Session 1 and Session 2 across the audience contexts.

	Session 1		Session 2
	M	SD	M	SD
Police officer	180.27	50.98	182.89	56.88
Psychologist	182.79	54.82	179.94	62.43
Friend	200.40	45.08	176.94	56.26

Omissions and additions

Table 3 depicts the mean number of omissions and additions in Session 2 accounts in the three audience contexts. All accounts contained omissions and additions. A (2) × 3 repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to test for changes in memory accounts (omissions and additions) across audience contexts. This yielded a significant main effect of change in memory account (F (1, 60) = 5.27, p = .025, η_p² = .081), such that there were more omissions (M = 10.15, SD = 2.91) than additions (M = 9.43, SD = 3.22). There was no main effect of audience context, F (2, 60) = 0.062, p = .94, η_p² = .002. However, there was a significant interaction between change in memory account and audience context, F (2, 60) = 3.4, p = .04, η_p² = .102.

Table 3.

Average number of omissions and additions made per event, across Session 1 and Session 2 in the three audience contexts.

	Omissions		Additions
	M	SD	M	SD
Police officer	9.92	3.27	9.96	3.33
Psychologist	9.99	3.38	9.63	3.38
Friend	10.52	2.07	8.75	2.99

To further explore this interaction, separate paired samples t-tests were conducted. Analysis indicated that participants in the friend context made significantly more omissions than additions in their Session 2 accounts (t(21) = 3.53, p = .002), whereas there was no significant difference in number of omissions and additions for participants in the police officer context (t(20) = –.10, p = .920) and psychologist context (t(19) = .60, p = .556).

Contradictions

Ninety-two percentage of participants contradicted themselves in details during Session 2 final recall. The total number of contradictions made across all events ranged from 0 to 7 (M = 2.70, SD = 1.73). On average, participants in the police officer condition made the least number of contradictions (M = 2.57, SD = 1.60), followed by participants in the psychologist condition (M = 2.70, SD = 2.13), with participants in the friend condition making on average the highest number of contradictions (M = 2.82, SD = 1.50). Contradictions were recoded based on frequencies for analysis (refer to Figure 1). In total, 30.2% of participants made between zero and one contradictions, 41.3% made between two and three contradictions, and 28.6% made between four and seven contradictions. There was no significant difference in contradictions made across audience conditions, x² (4, N = 63) = 2.52, p = .64, V = .14.

Figure 1.

Percentage of participants who made 0–1, 2–3 and 4–7 contradictions across audience context.

Types of contradictions

Table 4 shows the percentage of participants who made at least one contradiction organised by different types of contradictions made across the four events in the three audience contexts. The most frequently coded contradiction types were evaluation, temporal and probability contradictions. Only participants (n = 3) in the police officer context made people contradictions.

Table 4.

Percentage of at least one contradiction made for contradiction types across the audience contexts.

	Police officer	Psychologist	Friend	Total
Contradictions	%	%	%	%
Sensory	14.3	5.0	13.6	11.1
Location	4.8	5.0	22.7	11.1
Temporal	38.1	30.0	40.9	36.5
Estimation	14.3	25.0	18.2	19.0
Emotion	33.3	25.0	18.2	25.4
Evaluation	33.3	40.0	63.6	46.0
People	14.3	0.0	0.0	4.8
Action	9.5	5.0	4.5	6.3
Other memory	0.0	5.0	0.0	1.6
Probability	52.4	30.0	36.4	39.7
Temporal probability	4.8	20.0	22.7	15.9

Discussion

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of perceived audience context (police officer, psychologist or friend) on changes across autobiographical recollections. Separate analyses were conducted to investigate the differences in words recalled, number of omissions and additions, and number of and type of contradictions across audience contexts. Results yielded little support for the hypotheses that participants would exhibit the least amount of change when recalling accounts to a police officer, followed by to a psychologist, and the most amount of change when recalling to a friend.

Words recalled and information provided

There was no significant difference in words recalled across sessions for participants in the police officer and psychologist contexts. However, participants in the friend context provided significantly longer narratives in Session 1 than in Session 2, than participants in the police officer and psychologist contexts. In addition, participants in the friend context made significantly more omissions than additions in their Session 2 accounts, than participants in the police officer and psychologist contexts. This suggests that participants in the friend context provided less information in their Session 2 accounts. This provides some support for the hypothesis that participants in the friend context would be the least consistent across recollections.

This finding may be attributed to the typical experience of sharing past memories in everyday social settings, where the process is often intertwined with feedback from the listener who was often either also there at the time of the event or experienced something schematically similar (Barnier et al., 2008). In contrast to the more independent nature of recollection in forensic or clinical settings, reminiscing with friends tends to be more reliant on shared remembering and co-narration, where input is received from someone and a new memory is constructed (Barnier et al., 2008; Basden et al., 2000). Our findings align with previous research that even subtle social cues from the listener can affect how people remember (Pasupathi, 2001). People tend to provide shorter narratives when sharing a story with an unresponsive listener compared to a responsive one (Pasupathi and Hoyt, 2009). In this study, participants’ recounts in the friend context may have been influenced by the social function of autobiographical memory in the rare circumstance where they were not receiving feedback from another person. This general lack of social feedback may underly the shorter length of narrative in Session 2.

In addition, further analysis showed participants in the friend context added significantly less information than they omitted. In contrast, participants in both the police officer and psychologist contexts omitted and added similar amounts of information across accounts. This suggests that participants in the friend context were inconsistent in both narrative length and amount of information they provided in each account. Conversely, participants in the police officer and psychologist contexts were recalling several different details across sessions but were still consistently providing the same amount of information.

Omissions, additions and contradictions

There was no significant difference between audience contexts on the number of omissions, additions and contradictions made. This finding did not support the hypotheses that participants in the police context would exhibit the least amount of memory change, followed by participants in the psychology context and then participants in the friend context.

The literature provides a possible explanation for the finding that participants made relatively similar numbers of omissions, additions and contradictions across audience context. Autobiographical memory is reconstructive (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) and subject to change due to several factors such as loss of detail over time, gaining new details as you continue to remember or distortion due to source monitoring errors (Cameron, 2010). When retelling experiences of events individuals rely on different strategies to cope with gaps in their memory to preserve their narrative. When old details from an initial retelling are forgotten or omitted, new details are added in order to maintain narrative coherence over repeated retellings (Michaelian, 2011; Schacter et al., 2011). Even if recall is driven mainly by goals for accuracy and needs of autobiographical memory which demand correspondence with the past (Conway, 2005; Conway et al., 2004), this does not mean that memory is immune to change. For example, when recalling a truthful alibi to a police officer, Strange et al. (2014) found that while there was variation across participants, a large portion were still inconsistent across the two retellings. In addition, in another study, participants who were instructed to be accurate when recalling a short story tended to be more accurate and detailed than those who were instructed to be entertaining, however, they still only recalled 58% of the accurate story events (Dudukovic et al., 2004). Hence, while participants in the police officer context (a setting which values accuracy) may have tried to be as accurate and consistent as possible, they may have been unable to be accurate (Bluck, 2003).

Types of contradictions

There was support for the hypothesis that all participants would make a range of contradictions. Most participants contradicted themselves on details across retellings, with 11 types of contradictions coded. The most frequently coded contradictions were discrepancies in participants’ evaluation of an event, episode, person or the cause of something. For example, when evaluating their level of preparedness for a driving test, a participant initially recalled ‘I felt like as if I was underequipped’, whereas later in Session 2 stated, ‘I had more than enough of my hours and I was quite a solid driver’. This finding may be explained by the theory of the self-memory system proposed by Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000). They posited that the working self of autobiographical memory makes available the knowledge that is most consistent with one’s current goals, which may have contributed to participants contradicting themselves in retrospective evaluations of events. It should be noted that for some participants there may not have been a significant shift in personal goals between the 1-week interval. Temporal contradictions were the second most frequent type of contradictions made (e.g. a participant recalled in Session 1 that they started their job ‘last July’, whereas in Session 2, they recalled that it was in ‘May/June’). This is consistent with the finding that memory for temporal details is relatively poor (Cameron, 2010; Strange et al., 2014).

Interestingly, participants who recalled their memories to a police officer were the only participants who contradicted themselves on details describing a person (e.g. in Session 1, a participant recalled, ‘we went to the nearest petrol station’, whereas in Session 2, they recalled that it was only ‘my brother’ who had gone). For someone to contradict themselves on a concrete detail (like a person), they must recall a version of that detail in both sessions. It may be that the participants recalling accounts to a police officer put more focus on recalling details about the people present in both sessions. Prior research has highlighted that audience influences the content of information shared (Hyman, 1994; Norenzayan and Schwarz, 1999). Importantly, details regarding people are extremely significant in a forensic setting, especially when providing eyewitness statements or identifying people in a line-up (Wells and Olson, 2003). Furthermore, a focus on who was present would be beneficial when using the past to prevent harm and ensure safety in the future (Pillemer, 1992b, 2003). Hence, it may be that participants in the police officer context put a greater focus on remembering details about who was present, but as highlighted previously, were unable to do so consistently despite trying to be accurate. Further exploration of this is important. Eyewitness testimony is based on genuine past experiences and thus embedded in autobiographical knowledge. Yet, the interpretation of quality evidence within the criminal justice setting is often contradictory to the reconstructive nature of human memory (Hohl and Conway, 2017). Police and public views of memory typically do not align with memory research (Akhtar et al., 2018). The implications of this are paramount as inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts can be interpreted as deception (Strömwall and Granhag, 2003), or may lead to false convictions (Wells, 1993).

Limitations and future directions

The study has limitations. One limitation was the change in experimental setting (in-person vs remote), which occurred due to external COVID-19 related circumstances. While it is difficult to compare the two groups, as only 23.8% of participants completed the session remotely, preliminary analyses did indicate potential differences between the two settings. Remote participants tended to recall fewer words, make fewer contradictions and report lower clarity and comprehension. Future research, with a more even distribution of participants across experimental setting, should explore these differences further. A second potential limitation of this study is that participants were instructed to imagine they were recalling their memory to an individual, as opposed to having the individual physically present. While this was a methodology used to elicit a controlled environment within a laboratory setting, further studies should explore this beyond imagination and have participants recall their accounts to a physical person who occupies a specific role.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this study provides vital insight to the growing research on autobiographical memory. More research is needed to determine whether audience context influences the consistency of autobiographical memory. Our findings support other research that omissions, additions and contradictions are common across autobiographical accounts, even in the absence of misinformation or suggestion. Although individuals may prioritise the goal of accuracy in certain settings and may strive for consistent unchanging accounts across repeated memory recollections, they may be unable to do so because of varying intrinsic autobiographical memory processes. This is of particular importance because changes in autobiographical memory accounts are interpreted differently across settings.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Misia Temler

Author biographies

Isabel S Mahony holds a Bachelor of Science (Psychology, Neuroscience) and a Bachelor of Advanced Studies (Honours) both from the University of Sydney. She is currently pursuing a Master of Clinical Psychology at the University of Technology Sydney.

Misia Temler holds a Master of Psychology (Forensic) and a PhD in Psychology (Cognitive). Her research focuses on adaptive cognition and memory malleability in applied and everyday contexts. Her expertise is in autobiographical memory. She is a research affiliate at the University of Sydney and also works in private practice providing therapy to adults.

Helen M Paterson is an Associate Professor in Forensic Psychology at The University of Sydney. Her research investigates best practice techniques to elicit accurate and complete accounts from eyewitnesses, while preserving their psychological wellbeing.

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