Credibility assessment of imagined and perceived recall

Abstract

The characteristics of witnesses' descriptions of'a complex event were varied by manipulating the statement preparation in which they engaged before they "described the events, Descriptions were more likely to be attributed by judges to perception than to imagination if descriptions contained. moderate levels of sensorial and contextual details than if they contained high or low levels of sensorial and contextual details. Also, it seems that preparation affects how people describe complex events ánd that people use some of the same cues to judge the source of other people's memory descriptions as they use in making altributions about the source of their own memories.