A suspect of a crime can avoid legal repercussions by creating a false alibi. We examined whether creating such a false alibi can have adverse effects on memory. To do so, participants watched a mock crime video and were either instructed to create a false alibi or to provide an honest account for what they actually saw in the video. After a 2-day…

Investigators sometimes use timelines (visual depictions of time) to help children identify temporal information from experienced events or details from a particular instance of a repeated event. However, little is actually known about the efficacy of this visual aid on children's memories. Six- to 9-year-olds participated in four occurrences of a…

Few studies have examined the impact of alcohol on metacognition for witnessed events. We used a 2 × 2 balanced placebo design, where mock witnesses expected and drank alcohol, did not expect but drank alcohol, did not expect nor drank alcohol, or expected but did not drink alcohol. Participants watched a mock crime in a bar-lab, followed by free…

The accurate identification of an unfamiliar individual from a face photo is a critical factor in several applied situations (e.g., border control). Despite this, matching faces to photographic ID is highly prone to error. In lieu of effective training measures, which could reduce face matching errors, the selection of…