When Time Matters: Exploring the Impact of Recall Techniques and Educational Levels on Witness Testimony Quality

Mental reconstruction (MRC) and Free Recall (FR) have been recognized for enhancing the quality of witness statements. However, the mechanisms underlying this association remain insufficiently understood. This study explores how the time allocated to MRC and FR and variations in educational level influence the quality of eyewitness testimonies. Testimony quality is evaluated based on manually annotated content information provided by experts in testimony assessment, which measures adherence to the events. This is further complemented by fine-grained linguistic features, automatically extracted using linguistic analysis tools, to capture stylistic aspects. As a proof of concept, the analysis is performed on a corpus of 96 testimonies in Spanish describing two robbery cases. The results suggest that both mental reconstruction and narration times positively impact the accuracy of testimonies, as inaccuracies predominantly involve peripheral details. Furthermore, while the study confirms that educational level affects testimony quality, no significant differences were observed in the frequency of erroneous reports. This study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between cognitive strategies and the accuracy of witness statements, proposing an analysis approach applicable to forensic psychology for witness assessment.