APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)

Does Simulating Amnesia Mediate Genuine Forgetting for a

Crime Event?

SVEN-AÊKE CHRISTIANSON* and SUSANNA BYLIN

Stockholm University, Sweden

SUMMARY
An experiment is reported examining memory for a crime. One group of subjects was
instructed to genuinely remember the crime, and a second group was instructed to simulate
amnesia for the crime. Subjects were presented a description of a crime and asked to pretend
that they were the principal perpetrator. After reading the description, rating emotional
reaction and involvement, and after a distraction interval, subjects were given instructions for
one of two conditions: (1) Genuine ± to recall everything they could; (2) Simulation ± to recall
so as to evade responsibility, as if they did not remember very well. A free recall test was
followed by a cued recall test, and subjects were also asked to ®ll out a questionnaire assessing
responsibility. One week later, both groups were given the same tests and asked for genuine
recall and ratings. Results showed that whereas recall of the genuine group declined from test 1
to test 2, recall of the simulation group increased, but did not reach the level of the genuine
group. It is suggested that in simulated amnesia cases, suspects may withhold reporting details
that have a probative value for the police investigation, and that withholding of information
may reduce subsequent recall of the original memory representation of the crime event.
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suspects accused of violent crimes like murder or manslaughter often claim a complete
or partial loss of memory for the crimes in question. Although we do not know what
proportion of cases represent genuine amnesia, we assume that in the majority of cases,
the suspect chooses the strategy of having poor memory for the crime incident in order
to avoid answering questions about the event, thus trying to avoid conviction (see
Christianson, 1998; Sado€, 1974). Since psychologists and psychiatrists are frequently
asked to assess the credibility of claimed forgetting, it is of immediate importance in
relation to traumatic criminal events to study more systematically the pattern of
forgetting or withholding of information among suspects. In the present study, we
speci®cally examined how deliberate lying or withholding of information may a€ect
later retrieval when the suspect is motivated to tell the truth or attempts to genuinely
recall the crime-relevant information.

*Correspondence to: Sven-AÊke Christianson, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, S-106 91

Stockholm, Sweden.
Contract grant sponsor: Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Contract grant number: F 793/95.
Contract grant sponsor: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

CCC 0888±4080/99/060495±17 $17.50

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 10 October 1998
496 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

CRITICAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH AMNESIA FOR CRIME

Previous research indicates that 25±45% of o€enders in homicide cases or other

serious crimes claim amnesia for the event (see e.g., Kopelman, 1987; Taylor and
Kopelman, 1984). The literature shows that alcohol and drug abuse (often in com-
bination with depression), and an unplanned crime committed under strong emotional
stress, are factors that are most often associated with a genuine amnesia for a crime. It
goes without saying that a violent crime implies strong emotions on the part of
witnesses, victims, and perpetrators, and it is known from clinical contexts that
traumatic situations may produce temporary forgetting of the event, so-called
psychogenic amnesia (Kihlstrom and Evans, 1979). Thus, genuine psychogenic
amnesia may occasionally emerge in situations where a person is confronted with, for
example, grotesque death, and even perpetrators can be subjected to this kind of
amnesia (Christianson and Wentz, 1996; Porter and Yuille, in press). As argued by
Porter and Yuille, indications of amnesia in a perpetrator may result from an intra-
crime dissociative state, in which processes of volitional control are a€ected (see also
Kihlstrom et al., 1993). In some cases, the traumatic experience may cause permanent
amnesia (Williams, 1996; Christianson and Engelberg, 1997). A speculative, but
plausible, cause for these ®ndings is that extreme and prolonged stress may inhibit or
suppress the full function of the hippocampus (Squire, 1987). This may give rise to
fearful feelings that are very dicult to pinpoint as originating from a certain episode.
The reason is that, if the functioning of the hippocampus is not intact, perceptual
aspects of an experience will not be associated with temporal and spatial aspects
(van der Kolk and Saporta, 1993). This circumstance may further explain the
observation in clinical settings that traumatized persons have great diculty in
retrieving speci®cs in their experiences, although they have not suppressed or blocked
trauma-related memories.
In addition to the e€ects of emotional experience of a crime, the impact of
intoxication due to alcohol or other drugs during the crime event may cause sub-
stantial forgetting. According to Parwatikar et al. (1985), a considerable number of
murderers who undergo a psychiatric investigation before trial claim amnesia due to
alcohol intoxication or drug abuse. Taylor and Kopelman (1984) studied 212
perpetrators convicted of violent and non-violent crimes and found that 58% of the
perpetrators who showed a memory loss for the crime event had been drinking
alcohol during the twelve hours that preceded the crime. This can be compared with
perpetrators who did remember the crime event, of whom 67% had not been drinking
alcohol twelve hours before the crime event. According to Kopelman (1995), alcohol
can produce amnesia either as a result of a blackout or in the form of state- or context-
dependent diculties (see also Wolf, 1980).
However, perpetrators may also consciously withhold the truth and hide behind
a claimed amnesia. In the view of several researchers, malingered amnesia is a
most common cause for perpetrators' failure to `remember' the crime incident (see e.g.
Christianson, 1998; Sado€, 1974). Often it is a question of degree, with the reality lying
somewhere between an unconscious and a conscious forgetting. Occasionally, the
perpetrator's blocking of feelings and memories can change to denial or deliberate
claims of amnesia. Given most criminals' weak/low self-schemas and self-esteem, they
sometimes have a hard time incorporating/dealing with their criminal act and
associated feelings (cf. Horowitz and Reidbord, 1992). The perpetrator may, at some

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)
 Simulating forgetting for a crime event 497

level, be aware of the guilt and the trauma behind the crime, but feelings of guilt, fear,
and shame are sometimes too strong to face with a weak self-esteem, and the
perpetrator may therefore be unable to accept and consciously confront his or her
actions. In some cases, a perpetrator accepts his punishment and makes amends for his
crime through his `loss of memory', without ever confronting the crime consciously.
According to Porter and Yuille (in press), a neutral state in which the perpetrator
cannot reconcile himself to the fact that he or she has committed a crime can cause
psychogenic amnesia.

DIFFERENTIATING SIMULATED FROM GENUINE AMNESIA

A number of studies have been conducted on the subject of di€erentiating simulated

from genuine amnesia ( for example Lennox, 1943; Sado€, 1974; Schacter, 1983,
1986a; Taylor and Kopelman, 1984; Watkins, 1984). Parwatikar et al. (1985) examined
the attributes of genuine amnesia versus feigned amnesia in 105 males charged with
capital or ®rst-degree murder. These persons were split into three groups: those who
confessed to murder, those who denied committing murder and those who did not
deny committing murder, but who claimed to have no memory of the event. The male
subjects were tested and compared on the depression, hysteria, hypochondriasis,
psychopathy, and schizophrenia scales of the MMPI. They were also classi®ed
according to a stepwise discriminant function. This led, for example, to the assump-
tion that a person who claims amnesia for a crime, but who is not so classi®ed by the
discriminant function, is assumed to be simulating amnesia. The results showed that
individuals classi®ed as malingered amnesics tended to have higher IQ-scores than
those individuals who were classi®ed as genuine amnesics. This, as stated by
Parwatikar et al., indicates a possibility that a more intelligent person tends to simulate
amnesia. Furthermore, the study showed that the number of earlier arrests for the
amnesics classi®ed as malingerers was higher compared to those who were classi®ed as
genuine amnesics, and compared to those who had confessed. According to the
authors, this particular result indicates that simulated amnesia can perhaps increase
with increased experience with the criminal justice system. Moreover, if a person was
intoxicated at the time of the o€ence, had no neurotic features, and claimed amnesia,
this might also indicate simulated amnesia.
Some studies have shown that subjects who simulate amnesia tend to do so in a way
that is based on their own beliefs about the function of memory and amnesia. Some of
these studies have shown that, compared to people who su€er from true amnesia due
to brain disorders, simulators tend to exaggerate their amnesia (see e.g. Baker et al.,
1993; Wiggins and Brandt, 1988). Baker et al. (1993) showed that subjects who
simulated amnesia resulting from brain disorder not only exaggerated their amnesia
in relation to those who su€ered from real brain disorder and were genuinely amnesic,
but the simulators also tended to display a di€erent performance pattern for di€erent
types of tasks.
Wiggins and Brandt (1988) found that people generally do not distinguish between
amnesia resulting from di€erent etiologies, thus people are not aware that organic and
psychogenic amnesia have di€erent symptoms. In their study, simulated amnesia
most resembled the kind of memory impairment that is typical of psychogenic

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)
498 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

amnesia, even when subjects were asked to simulate amnesia caused by brain injury.
According to Wiggins and Brandt, the fact that subjects believe that memory is solely
a process that demands attention and e€ort, and that they do not take into account
implicit remembering (see Schacter, 1987, for a discussion of implicit versus explicit
memory) can be of importance in the detection of simulated amnesia. The authors
also propose that using diagnostic tasks based on knowledge about amnesia in
general is an appropriate ®rst step towards the detection of simulated amnesia.
Schacter (1986b) has examined subjects' own assessments of what they remember
or perhaps should be able to remember with some help, for example hints. These
experiments are known as `feeling of knowing' studies. `Feeling of knowing' is a
subjective belief that one should be able to recall or recognize forgotten information if
given useful hints or clues. Schacter's results indicate that simulators often claim that
they are not able to remember more, even with the help of hints and more time for
retrieval. This result points to an important issue in suspects' recollection of a crime,
namely the role of motivation to report details.
Intentionally withholding or not reporting information is a recurring phenomenon
in criminal investigation of violent crimes, but relatively little empirical research
has been done in this area. Withholding indicates that the simulators have speci®c
thoughts and ideas about the way in which true amnesia should be expressed. The aim
of the present study was to further explore people's patterns of remembering (or
reporting) when instructed to simulate amnesia or withhold information from a crime
in order to evade responsibility for a crime. We also aimed to examine the extent to
which withholding of crime-relevant information or deliberate lying in an initial
retrieval attempt will a€ect subsequent retrieval when the suspect is motivated to
recall everything genuinely. Since suspects often absolve themselves from culpability
for a crime, usually by describing their own involvement as less active and less
culpable, it is possible that this process will induce forgetting in terms of internal
generation of misinformation or source monitoring errors.
Considering research by Loftus and colleagues on the malleability of memory
caused by post-event information or research by Johnson on source-monitoring
errors, it seems plausible that lying could cause false information to be integrated into
the person's recollection of the original memory and thereby induce a memory
distortion. For example, Roediger et al. (1996) have shown robust misinformation
e€ects after subjects had produced the misinformation themselves. They concluded
`. . . if subjects are induced to produce an item of misleading information on a ®rst
test, the probability is greatly increased that this information will be recalled and
judged as remembered on a later test' ( p. 313). (See also Johnson et al., 1981, 1993;
Lindsay, 1990, for results showing that imagining events may confuse memory for
what was originally experienced.)
In the present study, subjects were asked to read a description (a statement) of a
crime and to pretend that they were the principal perpetrator of the crime. After
reading the statement, rating emotional reactions and involvement, and after a
subsequent distraction interval, subjects were given instructions for one of two
conditions: (1) Genuine ± recall everything they could; (2) Simulation ± recall so as to
evade responsibility for the crime. Subjects were then given a free recall and a cued
recall test and asked to ®ll out a questionnaire assessing responsibility. One week
later, subjects in both groups were given the same tests and asked for genuine recall
and ratings. Results will show that while recall of the genuine group declined from

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)
 Simulating forgetting for a crime event 499

test 1 to test 2, recall of the simulation group increased, but did not reach the level of
the genuine group.

METHOD
Subjects
A total of 54 undergraduates at Stockholm University and students at a municipal
school for adults (mean age 25.8 years) participated in the study. All subjects were
men, since men are over-represented as perpetrators of the type of crime described in
the statement used in this experiment. For participation in the experiment, subjects
were given three lunch vouchers each, worth 100 Swedish crowns, or the same amount
of money in cash.

Materials
The written stimulus material consisted of a narrative of a ®ght presented in the form
of a typed statement with a death certi®cate and a map of the scene of the crime. The
map was added to make it easier for the subjects to become personally involved in the
crime described in the statement. The statement was based on an authentic crime, but
revised regarding the victim, the time of the accident, and the perpetrator etc., making
it impossible to identify any private person or speci®c event. The statement described
the course of events in which a middle-aged man is stabbed to death by a young man.
In the typed statement the perpetrator was named `YOU' so the subjects would be
better able to enter the role of the accused and to facilitate feelings of personal
involvement. Below is a shortened version of statement (the original protocol was
three pages long).
The interrogation protocol begins by describing a person (the perpetrator ˆ you)
who is sitting at home and drinking with two friends. You and your friends decide to
ride down to the city centre. Before leaving the apartment, you do as you usually do ±
bring your knife along. During the evening, the three of you are at di€erent bars and
drink a great deal of strong beer. When you and one of your friends (Nyberg) are on
your way home, you run across a middle-aged couple (the Erikssons) who are stand-
ing on the sidewalk and looking at a display window. You and Nyberg would both
love a cigarette and ask them if they have any. The Erikssons respond that they do not
and start to leave. Then you and Nyberg ask if they have a few crowns to spare. They
do not and it is at this point the ®ghting begins. Nyberg suddenly throws himself on
Mr Eriksson and they begin to wrestle on the ground. You keep Mrs Eriksson away
by holding on to her hair and pulling her head back. Suddenly, Mr Eriksson gets the
upper hand and has Nyberg in a waistlock. Nyberg yells for help and you push
Mrs Eriksson aside. Then you draw your knife and stab Mr Eriksson twice, below his
left shoulder. He screams and collapses on the ground. You throw the knife in the
bushes and you and Nyberg run from the site. A witness has heard the ®ghting and
the scream and calls the police and an ambulance. You and Nyberg are found by
the police in a nearby subway station and taken to the nearest police station for
interrogation.

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)
500 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

Procedure

Groups of subjects were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Twenty-nine

subjects participated in the Genuine condition and 25 subjects in the Simulation
condition. Subjects were informed that they were to read a statement and to answer
some questions about it. They were assumed of the con®dentiality of their results in
the experiment. After a general description of the experiment, they were handed the
statement and instructed to read it and pretend that they were the principal perpet-
rator of the crime. No mention was made about the speci®c content of the statement
or the forthcoming memory testing.
After reading the statement, all subjects received a questionnaire which asked for a
global rating of their emotional reaction to the statement `How were you emotionally
in¯uenced by the statement?' (1 ˆ extremely negative; 11 ˆ extremely positive). They
were also asked to rate on an 11-point scale to what degree they were able to picture
themselves in the situation as the perpetrator depicted in the statement `To what
degree were you able to get involved in the statement?' (1 ˆ not at all; 11 ˆ very
much).
Next, a 30-minute distraction interval was inserted. In this ®ller interval the
subjects were engaged in solving word-completion and puzzle tasks presented on a
sheet of paper. These tasks had nothing to do with the statement. After completion of
the distractor tasks, subjects were handed a blank sheet of paper and asked to recall in
as much detail as possible all they could remember from the content of the statement.
They were instructed to write down the course of events in `me'/`I'-form, since they
were supposed to be the principal perpetrator in the statement: the one guilty of the
crime. However, before recalling the content of the statement, subjects in the two
conditions were given additional, but di€erent, instructions. Subjects in the Simula-
tion condition were instructed to describe in writing the course of events so as to
evade responsibility for the crime, as if they did not remember very well. Subjects in
the Genuine condition were instructed to write down everything they could remember
from the content in the statement. Subjects were allowed 20 minutes to recall the
content, and they were given time warnings when there were 10 and 5 minutes left.
After the free recall test, a questionnaire consisting of 25 open-ended questions was
distributed for a memory test of the course of events in the statement. Again, the
simulators were instructed to answer the questions in order to evade responsibility for
the crime, as if they did not remember very well. Although subjects were not given any
reward for being a good liar, it was stressed that they should try to evade their
responsibility for the crime as trustworthy as possible. Subjects in the Genuine
condition were instructed to answer the questions as they genuinely remembered the
information in the statement. For each response, a con®dence rating was made on a
3-point scale (1 ˆ `guessing', 2 ˆ `fairly sure', and 3 ˆ `sure'). Subjects were given
15 minutes to ®ll out the questionnaire, and the experimenter indicated when there
were 5 minutes left, to make sure they provided answers to all questions.
Following the memory questions, subjects were asked to ®ll out a questionnaire
with six rating items which concerned their opinion about responsibility for the crime.
These ratings were made on 11-point scales: `To what extent did the victim,
Karl Eriksson, behave provocatively towards you?' (1 ˆ not at all provocatively;
11 ˆ extremely provocatively); `To what extent was the victim responsible for the way
things developed?' (1 ˆ not at all responsible; 11 ˆ totally responsible); `To what

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)
 Simulating forgetting for a crime event 501

extent did you behave provocatively towards the man, Karl Eriksson?' (1 ˆ not at all
provocatively; 11 ˆ extremely provocatively); `To what extent were you responsible
for the way things developed?' (1 ˆ not at all responsible; 11 ˆ totally responsible);
`To what extent did you act intentionally?' (1 ˆ not at all, 11 ˆ to a great extent); and
`To what extent did you act impulsively?' (1 ˆ not at all impulsively; 11 ˆ extremely
impulsively). Subjects in the Simulation condition were asked to respond to the rating
scales from the perspective of being the principal perpetrator and to evade their
responsibility for the crime. Subjects in the Genuine condition were asked to make
their ratings from their own point of view, but to still try to identify with the principal
perpetrator in the statement.
Subjects returned to the laboratory about 1 week after the ®rst session. Upon arrival
at the laboratory, subjects were told that they would be given a repeated memory test of
the statement they studied during the ®rst session. They were then given the same
questions and rating tasks, in the same order as they had been administered 1 week
earlier. However, in contrast to the instructions given to the subjects on the ®rst test
occasion (T1), subjects in the Simulation condition were asked to describe in writing
what they actually remembered from the statement. That is, they should not evade
responsibility for the crime or simulate forgetting as they had previously done. Thus,
the subjects in the Genuine condition as well as the Simulation subjects were asked to
answer the questions as they genuinely remembered the event described in the
statement. First, subjects in both conditions were asked to describe the content of the
statement in a free recall task, the same task as in the ®rst test occasion. Twenty
minutes were allowed for this task, and they were given a time warning when 10 and
5 minutes were left. Next, subjects in both conditions answered the same 25 open-
ended questions as they had been asked during the ®rst session (15 minutes were
allowed for responding to the questions and a time warning was given when 5 minutes
remained). After having completed the memory questions, subjects were asked to
answer the same rating scales as in session one. During session two, subjects in both
conditions were asked to rate from their own point of view, but at the same time to try
to imagine themselves as being the principal perpetrator. After completing these tasks,
subjects were paid and informed about the importance of not discussing the
experimental procedure with their fellow students, and were then fully debriefed. The
total duration of the second interview session was about 40 minutes for each group.

Results
Memory data
Scoring of the subjects' free narrative statements was based on an evaluation made by
a detective chief inspector, who was asked to mark information in the statement
which he thought would be of importance in an investigation of a real case, that is, to
provide a framework for later scoring of data. The information marked by the
inspector before scoring was then divided into 28 critical facts. Each critical fact was
then assigned di€erent units of information. For example, one central statement read
`You threw the knife into a bush, You and Nyberg ran towards RingvaÈgen'. If a
subject in his free narrative statement had reported all this information, it was scored
as containing four units of correct information: one unit for `threw', one for `bush',
one for `ran', and one for `RingvaÈgen'. If a subject had only written `He threw the
knife into a bush' he would have recalled two units of correct information. For each

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)
502 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

subject, the number of units of information correctly reported was summarized into a
total score, with a maximum of 55 units of information.
The mean scores of completeness for free recall among subjects in the Genuine
condition and the Simulation condition are presented in Table 1. In considering ®rst
the data from the Genuine group, there is an overall decline in completeness as a
function of delay, from 0.50 to 0.45. The data from the Simulation group, on the other
hand, demonstrate a substantial increase in recall accuracy or completeness from
0.20 for the immediate test to 0.37 after the 1-week delay. Inspection of this ®gure
also indicates a substantial di€erence between groups for the delayed test session,
despite the fact that both groups were tested on what they genuinely recalled from the
statement.
Table 1. Proportion of correct recollection ( free recall) of critical facts among subjects in the
Genuine condition and in the Simulation condition on the ®rst (T1) and second (T2) test
occasions. Note that subjects in both conditions remember genuinely at T2
Genuine Simulation

T1 T2 T1 T2
Detail (Genuine)
1. 7 pm, go to the city (2p.) 0.60* 0.62 0.46{ 0.62
2. Brought a knife (1p.) 0.52* 0.48 0.00{ 0.36
3. Drinking at `Viktoria' (4p.) 0.95* 0.94* 0.66{ 0.83
4. All three left `Viktoria' at 11 pm (3p.) 0.94* 0.93* 0.68 0.77
5. Beer at `KroÈnet' (3p.) 0.84 0.80 0.69 0.77
6. Did not stay at `KroÈnet' more than an hour (1p.) 0.28{ 0.07 0.08 0.12
7. Wanted a cigarette, did not have cigarettes 0.60*{ 0.43 0.14 0.24
or money (2p.)
8. Ask if they had cigarettes (1p.) 0.10 0.10 0.04 0.04
9. Asked if they had cigarettes (1p.) 1.0* 1.0 0.60{ 0.88
10. Turned to the left, kiosk, park (3p.) 0.24* 0.25 0.08{ 0.20
11. Money for cigarettes (1p.) 0.83* 0.69 0.10{ 0.44
12. No (1p.) 0.52*{ 0.28 0.00{ 0.20
13. Quarrel begins (1p.) 1.0* 1.0 0.68{ 1.0
14. N pushed KE on his shoulder (3p.) 0.18* 0.09 0.00{ 0.16
15. N says: `Give me your wallet' (2p.) 0.41* 0.31 0.00{ 0.16
16. KE says `Get out of here' (2p.) 0.21 0.19 0.04 0.04
17. N throws himself on KE (2p.) 0.57*{ 0.28 0.04{ 0.20
18. N pressed KE against the ground (1p.) 0.38*{ 0.21* 0.00 0.04
19. IE started screaming (2p.) 0.36* 0.38* 0.12 0.16
20. You angry, bent her head, pulled her hair (4p.) 0.22* 0.19 0.03 0.08
21. KE gained advantage, hold N (2p.) 0.55* 0.55 0.04{ 0.46
22. KE should report You to the police (2p.) 0.28*{ 0.09* 0.00 0.00
23. N screamed for You for help (1p.) 0.76* 0.72* 0.04{ 0.44
24. You held knife against IE, she should stay 0.21* 0.14 0.03{ 0.17
away (3p.)
25. IE gesticulated, she was scratched (2p.) 0.31* 0.38 0.04{ 0.26
26. You stabbed KE in back (1p.) 1.0* 1.0 0.04{ 0.92
27. KE collapsed (1p.) 0.41* 0.52 0.12{ 0.40
28. You threw knife in bushes, ran towards 0.40* 0.41 0.18{ 0.49
RingvaÈgen (4p.)
Means 0.50*{ 0.45* 0.20{ 0.37
* ˆ p 5 0.05 between groups on T1 and T2.
{ ˆ p 5 0.05 within groups T1 and T2.

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 13: 495±511 (1999)
 Simulating forgetting for a crime event 503

Table 2. Proportion of errors of omission and commission among subjects in the Genuine
condition and in the Simulation condition on the ®rst (T1) and second (T2) test occasions
Incorrect responses
Simulation Genuine
Commission Omission Commission Omission
T1 8.48 13.16 0.72 10.41
T2 0.52 13.80 0.52 12.07
Incomplete responses
Simulation Genuine
Commission Omission Commission Omission
T1 0.00 2.76 0.00 4.65
T2 0.68 4.76 0.00 4.59

A 2  2 ANOVA (Group  Retention interval) conducted on these free recall data

revealed signi®cant main e€ects of group F(1,52) ˆ 62.36, p 5 0.0001, and retention
interval, F(1,52) ˆ 20.85, p 5 0.0001. There was also a signi®cant Group by Reten-
tion interval interaction, F(1,52) ˆ 89.65, p 5 0.0001. Separate comparisons showed
signi®cant di€erences between groups for both immediate and delayed testing (0.05).
In order to discriminate between errors of commission ( false recollections) and
errors of omission (incomplete recollection), all errors, on both test occasions, were
identi®ed. This identi®cation procedure was carried out both for incorrect responses
(zero points) and incomplete responses. From Table 2, where these data are pre-
sented, it is evident that both groups made more errors of omission than commission.
It is also evident that the simulators made more commission errors than the genuine
rememberers in the ®rst test session. However, these errors of commission were only
occasionally repeated during the second test session. For example, some simulators,
who described the Eriksson couple (i.e. the victims) with negative words in the ®rst
session tended to maintain that view even during the second.
The mean scores obtained for the open-ended questions, presented in Table 3, are
calculated as the proportion of subjects who correctly reported the speci®c detail
information from the statement. Subjects were given one point for each correct
answer and zero points for an incorrect or no answer. Certain items were scored with
more than one point, that is, they contained several units of information. For
example, item 6 read `What and how much did You drink before You went out that
night?' The correct answer, `Two strong beers and one third of two bottles of wine',
scored four points: one point for each type of drink and one point for each amount.
If a subject only answered either `beer and wine' or `two beers', he was given two
points. For each subject, the number of units of information correctly reported was
summarized in a total score, with a maximum of 34 units of information.
In order to analyse whether overall recall di€ered between subjects in the Genuine
versus the Simulation condition, an overall 2  2 ANOVA was conducted with
each participant's proportion of correct scores in response to the 25 questions
as dependent measures. Overall, the Genuine subjects answered a higher proportion
of speci®c questions correctly than the Simulation subjects, F(1,52) ˆ 20.80,
p 5 0.0001. There was also a signi®cant main e€ect of retention interval, F(1,52) ˆ
24.18, p 5 0.0001, and a signi®cant Group by Retention interval interaction,
F(1,52) ˆ 32.53, p 5 0.0001. Separate comparisons revealed an overall higher

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504 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

reporting of correct information among the Genuine subjects compared with the
Simulation subjects for both immediate and delayed testing p0 s 5 0.05. Thus,
consistent with the e€ects from free recall testing, subjects in the simulating condition
show a less complete recall performance than the controls, even when subjects in both
conditions remembered genuinely during delayed testing.
The mean values of con®dence ratings associated with the recall responses are
presented in parentheses in Table 3. No signi®cant di€erences between overall means
were found between groups on any of the two test occasions. The only signi®cant
di€erence was for the simulators between the ®rst and second test occasion. Separate
comparisons between groups revealed a signi®cant di€erence for immediate testing
(p 5 0.05) but not for testing one week later. Thus, although the simulators show a
signi®cantly less complete reporting of correct information than the controls when

Table 3. Proportion of correct recollection (open-ended questions) of detail information

among subjects in the Genuine condition and in the Simulation condition on the ®rst (T1) and
second (T2) test occasions
Genuine Simulation
Detail T1 T2 T1 T2
1. Time you woke up? 0.83 (2.8) 0.76 (2.8)* 0.72 (2.6) 0.60 (2.4)
2. You alone in a.m.? 0.97 (2.7) 0.86 (2.8) 0.84 (2.9){ 0.84 (2.6)
3. Who visited you? 0.97 (2.6) 1.0 (2.8) 0.92 (2.8) 1.0 (2.9)
4. What did you eat? 0.93 (2.9) 0.90 (2.8) 0.76 (2.9) 0.88 (3.0)
5. Errand you went on? 0.69 (2.7) 0.76 (2.6) 0.60 (2.8){ 0.72 (2.4)
6. What/amount 0.59* (2.2) 0.55 (2.2) 0.45 (2.2){ 0.52 (2.0)
drank ! home (4p.)
7. Time went to city centre? 0.45 (1.6){ 0.41 (1.9) 0.32 (1.7) 0.32 (1.8)
8. Who went with you? 0.93 (2.7) 0.97 (2.8) 0.96 (2.9) 1.0 (2.8)
9. Did you have a weapon? 1.0* (3.0)* 1.0 (3.0) 0.48{ (2.6){ 1.0 (3.0)
10. First bar/restaurant? 0.97 (2.8) 0.93 (2.8) 0.92 (2.7) 0.96 (2.7)
11. Any friends at bar? (3p.) 0.70* (2.9) 0.72 (2.9) 0.54{ (2.8) 0.64 (2.9)
12. What/amount 0.86*{ (2.5)*{ 0.79 (2.2) 0.52{ (2.0) 0.68 (2.2)
drank ! bar? (4p.)
13. Time left bar? 0.86* (2.5)* 0.90* (2.5) 0.56 (2.0) 0.56 (2.3)
14. What you did after bar? (2p.) 0.72 (2.6) 0.74 (2.6) 0.72 (2.7) 0.76 (2.6)
15. More alcohol later? 0.79 (2.5) 0.86 (2.7) 0.72{ (2.7) 0.92 (2.8)
When you ®rst saw the Erikssons:
16. Your/Nyberg's position? 0.69* (2.3) 0.69 (2.1) 0.36{ (2.0) 0.60 (2.2)
17. Erikssons' position? 0.65* (2.2) 0.69 (2.1) 0.32{ (2.0) 0.52 (2.2)
18. What Erikssons did? 0.69* (2.4) 0.76 (2.5) 0.36{ (2.1) 0.68 (2.4)
19. Way Erikssons went? 0.72* (2.3) 0.69* (2.5) 0.24 (2.2) 0.40 (2.4)
20. Way you/Nyberg went? 0.86* (2.4) 0.90 (2.5) 0.56{ (2.4){ 0.84 (2.7)
21. Site you met Erikssons? 0.34* (2.3) 0.38 (2.2) 0.12 (2.0) 0.24 (2.0)
22. Why contact with them? 0.97* (2.9)* 1.0 (2.9) 0.72{ (2.5){ 0.92 (3.0)
23. Who involved in ®ght? 0.97* (2.9)* 1.0 (2.8) 0.76{ (2.4) 1.0 (2.7)
24. Was Mrs E injured? 0.69* (2.9)* 0.65 (2.9)* 0.12{ (2.3) 0.44 (2.5)
25. Mr E died ± who held the 1.0 (3.0)* 1.0 (3.0) 0.32{ (2.7) 1.0 (2.9)
knife?
Means 0.79* (2.5)* 0.80* (2.6) 0.56{ (2.3) 0.70 (2.4)
Notes: Subjects in both conditions remember genuinely at T2. Where nothing else is noted, subjects get 1p./
correct answer. The numbers in parentheses show the two groups' means for con®dence in their answers.
* ˆ p 5 0.05 between groups at T1 and T2.
{ ˆ p 5 0.05 within groups between T1 and T2.

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 Simulating forgetting for a crime event 505

tested genuinely, there was no di€erence in con®dence between groups. As for the free
recall, a discrimination between errors of commission ( false recollections) and errors
of omission (incomplete recollection) was also conducted. All questions that were left
unanswered or responses such as `do not remember', `do not know', etc. were counted
as errors of omission. Incorrect answers (zero points) were counted as errors of
commission. However, it should be noted that commission does not necessarily imply
an entirely new piece of information (as if a subject on the question about what they ate
answered pizza instead of Chinese food). Instead, it could also indicate only an
incorrect piece of information. For example, on the question `What was the Eriksson
couple doing when You ®rst saw them?' a subject may have answered `out walking'
instead of `window-shopping' (the right answer). You cannot say that `out walking' is a
completely new piece of information since the couple were actually walking, although
the information asked for was `window-shopping' and subjects received zero points.
The results, presented in Table 4, showed that the simulators had more errors due to
omission than genuine subjects in the ®rst session. During the second session, however,
subjects in the genuine group committed more omission errors than the simulators.
Simulating subjects showed more errors due to commission than genuine subjects, on
both test occasions. Questions 6, 11, 12 and 14 could give 4, 3, 4 and 2 points respect-
ively. All incomplete (but non-zero) items were identi®ed. Except for two pieces of
new information in the Genuine group and four pieces of new information in the
Simulating group, all errors were due to omission. Furthermore, the amount of
errors on these four questions were equally distributed among the groups on both test
occasions.
In order to elucidate whether the subjects' memories di€er with respect to the
critical facts that were considered to be of critical value for the police investigation
(means of proof), the responses to open-ended questions 7±10, 12±15 and 21±25 were
combined for a separate analysis. The mean values for the non-simulators were 0.81
on both test occasions. The comparable means for the simulators were 0.56 and 0.74.
A 2  2 ANOVA carried out on these data revealed a signi®cant main e€ect of
group, F(1,52) ˆ 23.75, p 5 0.0001, retention interval, F(1,52) ˆ 23.07, p 5 0.0001,
and a signi®cant Group by Retention interval interaction, F(1,52) ˆ 30.96,
p 5 0.0001. Concerning the con®dence ratings, the same type of ANOVA revealed
a signi®cant main e€ect of group, F(1,52) ˆ 10.38, p 5 0.01 and retention interval,
F(1,52) ˆ 1073.54, p 5 0.0001. Thus, the critical facts were retained more poorly by
the simulators compared with the non-simulators on both test occasions.
One of the most critical questions concerned information about the principal
perpetrator, that is, subjects' responses to the question `Who held the knife and killed
the victim?' Subjects' responses to this speci®c question were divided into ®ve
categories, namely, `I did'; `Accident'; `Friend'; `Other person' and `No mention'. The

Table 4. Proportion of errors of omission and commission on open-ended questions among

subjects in the Genuine condition and in the Simulation condition on the ®rst (T1) and second
(T2) test occasion
Simulation Genuine
Commission Omission Commission Omission
T1 7.32 2.08 2.72 1.17
T2 4.92 0.80 2.90 1.03

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506 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

Table 5. Subjects' responses to the question `Who held the knife and killed the victim?' on the
®rst (T1) and second (T2) test occasions
Genuine Simulation
T1 T2 T2 T2
(Genuine)
I did 27 28 1 23
Accident 1 1 8 1
Friend 0 0 3 0
Other person 0 0 1 0
No mention 1 0 12 1
Note: Subjects in both conditions remember genuinely at T2.

last category refers to subjects who did not mention the stabbing at all. From the data
presented in Table 5, it is evident that the simulators tended to blame someone else on
the ®rst test occasion. On the second test occasion, however, all subjects admitted that
they had held the knife and that it was their fault that the man had been stabbed to
death.

Ratings
Self-rating data collected to show possible di€erences between the simulators and
the non-simulators regarding emotional experiences, personal involvement, and
responsibility for the crime are summarized in Table 6. The data indicate that subjects
in both conditions experienced about the same level of emotional and personal
involvement. Concerning ratings about guilt, signi®cant di€erences can be seen

Table 6. Mean ratings of emotional impact and culpability among subjects in the Genuine
condition and in the Simulation condition on the ®rst (T1) and second (T2) test occasions
Genuine Simulation
T1 T2 T1 T2
(Genuine)
Emotional impact
Emotionally in¯uenced by the statement (a) 5.30 5.20
Personal involvement in the protocol (b) 6.76 6.72
Culpability
The victim provocative towards You (c) 4.30* 4.80 8.50{ 4.60
The victim responsible for what happened (d) 3.10* 3.50 8.00{ 2.60
You provocative towards the victim (e) 6.10* 5.80 2.50{ 6.00
You responsible for what happened ( f) 7.90* 7.90 2.40{ 8.10
Extent to which You acted intentionally (g) 5.70* 5.50 2.10{ 5.70
Extent to which You acted on impulse (h) 9.00 8.90 7.60 8.00
Note: Subjects in both conditions remember genuinely at T2.
* ˆ Signi®cant p 5 0.0001 between the groups at T1 and T2.
{ ˆ Significant p 5 0.05 within the groups between T1 and T2.
(a) 1 ˆ Very positive; 7 ˆ very negative.
(b) 1 ˆ Not at all; 11 ˆ very much.
(c) 1 ˆ Not at all provocative; 11 ˆ extremely provocative.
(d) 1 ˆ Not at all responsible; 11 ˆ totally responsible.
(e) 1 ˆ Not at all provocative; 11 ˆ extremely provocative.
( f) 1 ˆ Not at all responsible; 11 ˆ totally responsible.
(g) 1 ˆ Not at all; 11 ˆ to a great degree.
(h) 1 ˆ Not at all impulsive; 11 ˆ completely impulsive.

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 Simulating forgetting for a crime event 507

between groups for the ®rst session, where the simulators rated their guilt as con-
siderably lower compared to the non-simulators. No di€erences were found between
groups for the second test occasion. An interesting pattern worth noting is that the
values of the non-simulators indicate reduced guilt from test session one to session
two. That is, during session two the victim is rated as more provocative, and their own
responsibility as somewhat less. It should be acknowledged, however, that some
subjects reported diculties in answering the rating questions concerning guilt when
they were to answer from their own point of view on the second test occasion, and the
answers should therefore be interpreted with some caution.
The present experiment demonstrates that the simulators exhibit worse memory for
detail information than subjects in a non-simulating condition. That simulators
choose to `forget' information critical to the crime event indicates that they have made
erroneous assumptions about what information individuals normally remember from
an emotional crime event. Self-rating data indicate that the simulators, on the ®rst test
occasion, tend to blame others for the crime, or alternatively claim that the crime was
an accident, in order to deny their guilt. The results also show that the simulators'
memory of the statement was negatively in¯uenced by the act of simulation, as
revealed by their inferior performance during the second test occasion, when tested on
what they genuinely remembered from the crime event.

DISCUSSION

A major purpose of the present study was to examine memory for a crime event in
subjects instructed to genuinely remember the crime versus a group instructed to
simulate amnesia for the crime. To study the e€ects of forgetting or withholding of
information in simulators, we measured memory performance on two occasions.
When tested on the ®rst occasion, one group of subjects was instructed to report all
that they could remember from the crime event (non-simulators), while a second
group was instructed to remember the course of events in order to evade their
responsibility for the crime, as if they did not remember very well (simulators). As
expected, the critical facts (i.e. information important as means of proof) and
surrounding circumstances were signi®cantly more poorly retained by the simulators
compared with subjects in the non-simulating condition in the ®rst test session. This
particular result shows, of course, what people report when they are instructed to
simulate forgetting, not how simulators and non-simulators di€er, given that both
groups will have remembered and forgotten some information. That is, the simulators
certainly would have been able to recall more of the critical information, but they
elected not to report certain details in order to evade responsibility for the crime.
A more interesting aspect of the data obtained is that the instructions to the
simulators, which motivated subjects not to report crime-relevant information in the
®rst test, had a carryover e€ect of retarding recall during the second test. That is,
subjects who had simulated forgetting on the ®rst test occasion also remembered
considerably less information compared to the non-simulators on the second test
occasion, when all subjects were motivated to report everything they could remember.
The results from free recall and open-ended questions point in the same direction, and
a separate analysis of the most critical facts in the statement (e.g. information con-
cerning the victims) revealed that this pattern was even more obvious. There might be

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508 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

several explanations for this ®nding. One is that the di€erence between groups could
be due to the bene®cial e€ects of the ®rst test on the genuine subjects' memory. That
is, the genuine rememberers had more rehearsal of the facts than the simulators. Thus,
it could be that the ®rst test occasion served as an act of repetition for subjects in the
non-simulation condition, and thereby made it easier for them to remember detailed
information on the second test occasion. For subjects in the simulating condition, on
the other hand, the ®rst test occasion was less of a repetition since they were asked to
`reproduce' the statement in order to deny responsibility and guilt, which meant that
they, in practice, excluded information that was important for assessing responsibility
for or solving the crime. Furthermore, if we assume that both groups show some
forgetting over time, the rate of forgetting might be slowed for the genuine subjects
by virtue of the ®rst test since we know that retrieval usually enhances subsequent
retrieval. Another possibility is that retrieval induced forgetting among the
simulators. They might recall part of the event in the ®rst test and the rest of the
material is subject to retrieval-induced forgetting during the second. Yet another
possible explanation for the outcome that the simulators remembered less on the
second test is distortion or displacement. One possibility is that the simulators
thought of a new version or new details that would ®t their conception/idea of being
less responsible for the course of events and not guilty of the crime. This type of
processing would imply that subjects in the simulating condition confuse their own
version with the original statement and then have diculties understanding how their
own memory has changed. That is, their alteration of details might subsequently
have been misattributed to the original account, and thereby produced a source-
monitoring error (Johnson et al., 1981, 1993). The last-mentioned explanation is
partly supported by the subjects' con®dence ratings for the open-ended questions,
which do not di€er signi®cantly between the groups, despite the fact that subjects in
the Simulation condition were signi®cantly less accurate in their recollections than
those in the Genuine condition. It could also be seen, in some of the statements, that
simulators who in the ®rst test occasion described the victim very negatively
(threatening, mean, etc.) tended to do so even during the second session.
However, by comparing errors from both sessions it was evident that the reduced
performance at the second session among simulators was due to errors of omission
rather than commission. This pattern of data does not re¯ect the e€ects found in the
misinformation studies, showing that internal generation of misinformation causes
false recall. Thus, among several alternative explanations for the e€ects obtained in
the present study, it seems that the reduced performance in the second session among
the simulators was due to their having had less rehearsal of the facts than the genuine
remembers, and not because they falsely recalled a new version or detail that they had
misattributed to the original account.
An additional ®nding in the present study is that, although the Simulation group
recalled fewer details of the event at the second session than did the Genuine
group, both groups reported equivalent culpability in this session. That is, failure to
recall or withholding of event information in the ®rst test depressed later recall of
event information, but it had no ill e€ects on later memory for culpability of the
crime, even though, logically, feelings of culpability should evolve from recalled
details of the event. This pattern of results suggests that recall of event information
and recall of culpability (including a€ect, interpretation, etc.) follow di€erent
principles of memory. Recent research on memory for emotional events show how

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 Simulating forgetting for a crime event 509

di€erent organization of memory components may give rise to dissociative kinds

of remembering of emotionally valanced information (see e.g. Christianson and
Engelberg, in press; Tobias et al., 1992). The diculty in recalling emotionally
valanced information may be partly due to insucient access to event information
stored at an explicit level of memory. Whereas temporal and spatial aspects require
more intentional processing at the level of explicit recall, emotional aspects strongly
associated with perceptual details, or feelings and mood evoked at the time of the
event, are less amenable to explicit retrieval attempts. Such emotional aspects are
sometimes organized so as to favour non-conscious access routes, and are instead
more accessible through implicit remembering (Schacter, 1987). A di€erent organiza-
tion of event information, although seemingly interconnected, may thus account for
the dissociative memory phenomena obtained in the present study, whereby recall of
details of the crime event is governed by explicit remembering, and the culpability
component of the crime event is re-experienced in the absence of explicit event
information and mediated by implicit remembering.
In conclusion, the ability to di€erentiate between genuine and simulated forgetting
is of great importance within the police and judicial system, and we need to increase
our knowledge about genuine amnesia and malingered amnesia in di€erent contexts.
In applying the present ®ndings to the legal context, one could conclude that suspects
who have simulated amnesia at the beginning of an investigation, and then decide to
tell the truth, probably do not remember as well as they would have if they had told
the truth from the beginning. A practical implication of this could be that a suspect
should not be asked to give a statement until the police ocer has stressed the
importance of being truthful and fully elicited the suspect's cooperation. Further-
more, when simulated amnesia is suspected in legal cases, it should be of crucial
importance to understand which patterns of forgetting are indicative of malingered
amnesia. In discussing practical implications, we should, of course, be cautious in
generalizing the present ®ndings to a real-life crime situation. There are indeed
important di€erences between a real-life crime situation and hypothetical crime
scenarios engaged in during an experiment. For example, real o€enders may go over
the crime in their mind on many occasions before they are interviewed by the police,
which would be likely to consolidate the memory for the crime in a di€erent way than
the `o€enders' engaged in the present study.
Needless to say, the present results, in conjunction with other studies on simulated
amnesia (see Schacter, 1986b,c), suggest that people tend to have speci®c ideas and
conceptions about how memory and amnesia work. We believe that some of these
ideas have been revealed in the presented research suggesting that in simulated
amnesia cases, suspects may simply withhold reporting those details that have a
probative value for the police investigation. This withholding of information may,
as the present study suggests, reduce subsequent recall of the original memory
representation of a crime event.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by Grant F 793/95 from the Swedish Council for
Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences to Sven-AÊke Christianson and Grant
from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to Susanna Bylin.

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510 S.-AÊ. Christianson and S. Bylin

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