Memory for committing a crime: Effects of arousal, proximity, and gender

HEATHER L. PRICE, ZINA LEE, and J. DON READ
Simon Fraser University

Few researchers have investigated the memories of active participants in an emotionally arousing crime. The present study used a mock crime paradigm to explore participant memories for a low, moderate, or highly arousing event. Forty-seven undergraduate participants committed a "theft" of an exam from a professor's office. Two weeks after the theft, participants completed a cognitive interview, recalled objects from the professor's office, and constructed a map of the route to and from the crime room. Arousal improved reports on a map recall task but no other recall indices. Although there was a general superiority of recall of proximal over distal details, arousal only infrequently interacted with proximity. Some support was found for proximity (spatialßtemporal distinction) as a useful proxy for centrality. Future work will benefit from an examination of the overlap between definitions of centrality and proximity with more traditional stimuli.