The recall of an event such as a robbery has been shown to be affected by how closely post-event information corresponds to what the witness actually saw. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the effect of misleading information may be influenced by expertise of the source of the post-event information. Results revealed that subjects recalled less accurately when they received misleading information in the narrative than when the information corresponded with what they had viewed, whereas the accuracy of the recall was unaffected by whether the witness in the narrative was an expert or a non-expert. Subjects rated the narrative witnesses as having equal credibility. This study suggests that the memory for events related to a crime-scene may be impaired by misleading post-event information, but is unaffected by the source of that misleading information when the sources differ in occupational expertise
