Determining True and False Witnessed Events: Can an Eyewitness-Implicit Association Test Distinguish Between the Seen and Unseen

Despite the current popularity of indirect cognitive measures in psychology, there is a paucity of research using indirect measures in the psychology and law literature. We bridge this gap in two studies in which we tested whether a modified version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) could distinguish between seen and unseen events from a previously witnessed incident. College students (total N = 69) viewed a short crime video and completed an eyewitness-Implicit Association Test (eIAT) and recognition task. In Study 1, the eIAT and recognition task presented true and false central and peripheral details from the video. In Study 2, we used a misinformation paradigm to test the utility of the eIAT. In both studies, the eIAT successfully distinguished between witnessed and non-witnessed details. However, in Study 2, the eIAT did not improve upon the recognition task's ability to correctly classify participants (i.e., control vs. misinformed group). Implications are discussed.