Does Lexical Marking Affect Eyewitness Recall?

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Abstract
Four experiments examined the effect of lexical marking on eyewitness recall. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects viewed a videotaped reenactment of a purse snatching; in Experiment 3, they imagined the occurrence of one; and in Experiment 4, they viewed a videotaped reenactment of a liquor-store armed robbery. In each experiment, subjects responded to questions containing marked, unmarked, or neutral adjectives concerning the assailant's age and height as well as other aspects of the event. In the first three experiments, analyses of variance on the subjects' responses and homogeneity of variance tests both failed to show effects attributable to lexical marking. In Experiment 4 the marked question produced significantly lower estimates of the robber's age as compared to the unmarked and neutral questions. It was argued that previous studies that showed a lexical marking effect were contaminated by demand characteristics.

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