| The current study seeks to explore whether practice effects and Socially-Shared Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (SS-RIF) occurs in a legal context of direct- and cross-examination of an expert witness in a competency trial. Participants consisted of 80 English speaking, U.S. citizens, male and female, ranging between the ages of 18-76 recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk online. Participants completed the online study via Qualtrics, whereby they watched a video of a direct-examination of an expert, followed by a cross-examination of the expert. Forty participants then recalled as much of the original expert testimony, resulting in practice items from a practice category (Rp+), nonpracticed items from a nonpracticed category (Nrp), and nonpracticed items from a practiced category (Rp-). The other 40 participants did not complete a final recall in order to control for any impact a final recall could have on the final verdict. Results indicated that, for the experimental condition, there was a practice effect in the defense expert condition whereby participants remembered significantly more of the Rp+ statements than Nrp statements. Retrieval-induced forgetting was not found in either condition. We did find a relationship between the amount of total statements recalled and confidence in final verdict, again for the defense expert condition. Additionally, results support the hypothesis that, for both conditions, the direct-examination had a more significant impact on final verdict than the cross-examination, and that the expert's opinion of the defendant was a significant predictor of participant's final verdicts. |
