ABSTRACT
Human memory, or at least memory reports, can be distorted in a variety of ways, and in many different situations (see Roediger, 1996, and Schacter, 1995, for reviews). A particular type of memory or report distortion that has attracted much attention in the last several decades is eyewitness suggestibility. This term refers to the phenomenon that, as a result of postevent suggestion, people come to remember suggested misinformation as a part of an originally witnessed event (e.g., Lindsay, 1990; Loftus, 1975; Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978; Zaragoza & Lane, 1994). Since Loftus and her colleagues demonstrated the phenomenon in laboratory-based experiments in the late 1970s, substantial research effort has been devoted to isolating the underlying mechanisms of eyewitness suggestibility. Early conjectures included the memory impairment hypothesis, according to which eyewitness suggestibility occurs because memories of the original event are irrevocably damaged or erased by postevent misinformation (e.g., Loftus, 1979; Loftus et al., 1978). Later studies have shown, however, that eyewitness suggestibility could arise independently of actual memory impairment (e.g., McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985). Modern researchers now generally agree that multiple mechanisms, both cognitive and socioemotional, are responsible for eyewitness suggestibility (e.g., Ceci & Bruck, 1993; Schooler & Loftus, 1993).
