sequence of actions in a bank robbery. For example, a
bank robbery script may include information like the
robbers take out weapons, they disarm the guards,
they demand money, the tellers provide them with
money, the robbers make their escape, and so forth.
Schemas and scripts are thought to guide our
understanding of events as they unfold and guide our
recall of events as they are being remembered.
Reconstructive theories of remembering suggest that
schemas and scripts have two effects on our ability to
remember events. They make actions that are incon-
sistent with the schema especially easy to remember
because these actions require extra processing at the
time of study to reconcile them with the schema.
Schemas can also lead to false memories because they
are used to fill in gaps in our memory for the event. If
you cannot remember what happened in an event, the
schema provides the default valueyou should expect.
In one classic study of the role of scripts on memory,
participants were presented with a story about a young
woman. Some of the participants were told that the
story was about Helen Keller. Other participants were
told that the story was about someone else. Participants
who heard that the story was about Helen Keller falsely
remembered facts from the story that were consistent
with their world knowledge about Helen Keller (e.g., a
book was written about her life). Other research has
shown that participants are especially likely to correctly
recall information that violates their expectations. For
instance, when reading a story about a restaurant, one
may remember unexpected events—such as the waiter
spilling water—especially well.
Recently, researchers have shown that similar
effects occur in forensically relevant settings. In one
recent study, participants were shown a videotape of a
bank robbery. The video included consistent and
inconsistent schema, and irrelevant actions. Consistent
with prior research on reconstructive memory, partici-
pants falsely recalled many details that were consistent
with the robbery schema. In addition, the researchers
found that participants used their bank robbery schema
to interpret ambiguous information in the video.Postevent Information
Reconstructive theories of memory also claim that
people rely on information obtained after the event to
reconstruct their past. Information obtained after an
event is known as postevent information.For instance,
if one were to witness a bank robbery and then latersaw a news report about the robbery, details from the
news report may become incorporated into one’s mem-
ory for the event. Classic work on the role of postevent
information was conducted by Loftus in the 1970s. In
one study, participants watched a videotape of an auto
accident. Some participants were asked to estimate
how fast the cars were going when they “collided.”
Other participants were asked to estimate how fast the
cars were going when they “smashed” into each other.
When tested 1 week later, participants who had been
asked the “smashed” version of the question were
more likely to remember seeing broken glass, when in
fact no broken glass had been shown in the film.
The mechanisms by which postevent information
influence memory became a subject of debate in the
1980s. Loftus proposed a theory whereby postevent
information overwrites memory for the original infor-
mation in storage. Other researchers argued that
postevent information does not overwrite memory for
the original event but rather interferes with the retrieval
of the original event. Still other researchers argued that
postevent information only influences memory reports
in those participants who would not have remembered
the detail in the first place. Later attempts to understand
the influence of postevent information conceptualized it
as an error in source memory. In other words, partici-
pants remember the information but have difficulty
determining whether that information is from the origi-
nal event or the postevent information (e.g., was it from
the bank robbery or from the newspaper account?).
Work on postevent information has been extended in
a wide variety of forensically important settings. Some
research has examined the role of the interviewer in
moderating the effects of postevent information. Social
psychologists have shown that witnesses tend to dis-
count postevent information when it is presented by a
noncredible witness and to accept postevent informa-
tion when it is presented by a credible witness. Also, in
the 1980s, considerable research began to examine the
role of postevent information in children. After some
initial controversy, researchers reached a consensus that
preschool-age children are more likely to be influenced
by postevent information than are older children or
adults. During this same time period, researchers came
up with a number of clever research designs to examine
children’s false memories in contexts with considerable
ecological validity. For instance, researchers conducted
a number of studies of children’s memories for stress-
ful events by embedding postevent information experi-
ments into children’s visits to their pediatrician.Reconstructive Memory——— 677R-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:43 PM Page 677