Order effects in collaborative memory contamination? Comment on Gabbert, Memon, and Wright (2006)

Abstract

Gabbert, Memon, and Wright (2006) claimed evidence of an order effect in collaborative memory contamination, in which the collaborator who first spoke of a particular detail was more influential. The Gabbert et al. findings are ambiguous in this regard, because their analyses collapsed across (1) cases in which both collaborators reported the detail they had witnessed and (2) cases in which only one of the collaborators mentioned the detail s/he had mentioned. The latter cases do not evidence an order effect per se.