Abstract
Criminal investigations often hinge on people’s memories for stressful events, and the coherence of those memories is likely to play a significant role in jurors’ judgements. Yet, although we are learning more about the effect of stress on memory accuracy, less is known about the impact of stress on memory coherence. Two main arguments exist. Some researchers have shown that stress at the time of an event can impair encoding, leaving the memory jumbled, fragmented, and—ultimately—incoherent. Others have shown that stress has no effect on—or can even enhance—memory coherence. These contrasting findings are likely to arise from methodological differences across studies. In the present study, we employed a VR paradigm that allowed us to expose all participants to the same stimuli, but was likely to cause different levels of stress to different people. We exposed participants (N = 73) to a VR height simulation during which they were asked to walk along a plank suspended 80 stories above ground. We measured both subjective as well as physiological measures of stress (heart rate, skin conductance level). Twenty-four hours later, participants were interviewed about their experience and gave ratings of the perceived coherence of their memories. We also coded these free recall accounts with a computer-scored system (LIWC) to measure coherence. Our findings revealed few relations between stress and memory coherence. There was some evidence that heightened subjective stress was associated with reduced memory coherence, as measured by the computer-scored system. In contrast, physiological stress responses did not significantly correlate with memory coherence. These findings provide some preliminary insights into how victims and witnesses might remember the types of events frequently recounted in the courtroom.