Eyewitness suggestibility and source similarity: Intrusions of details from one event into memory reports of another event

We explored the effect of the degree of conceptual similarity between a witnessed event and an extra-event narrative on eyewitness suggestibility. Experiments 1A and 1B replicated Allen and Lindsay s (1998) finding that subjects sometimes intrude details from a narrative description of one event into their reports of a different visual event. Those experiments also showed that intrusion rates were even higher when the narrative described the visual event itself. Experiment 2 replicated those findings, but found no more intrusions from a thematically similar versus dissimilar narrative. In Experiment 3 we disguised the relationship between the narrative and visual event, and obtained more intrusions from a thematically similar than dissimilar narrative. In Experiment 4 we obtained a thematic similarity effect when the relationship between narrative and visual event was disguised, but none when it was not. Results are discussed from the perspective of the source-monitoring framework. 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.