The Effect of Emotional Salience and Alcohol on Women's Memories for Sexual Assault

Sexual offenses often involve alcohol use by the victim and perpetrator. Victims who were under the influence at the time of the crime are less likely to have their cases prosecuted compared to victims who were sober. A major concern the legal system has is that victims who were under influence of alcohol will not remember forensically information about the assault. To date, however, no research has systematically examined the influence of alcohol on remembering sexual offenses.

The overarching objective of the research is to predict when victims who were under the influence of alcohol will accurately remember details about a sexual offense. The results will provide essential knowledge for establishing best practice guidelines for interviewing witnesses who were intoxicated.
Currently, no such guidelines exist anywhere in the world.

Previous research suggests that alcohol intoxication narrows attention, thereby making people more responsive to the most central and emotionally salient elements of a situation. In the context of rape, the culprit's physical appearance and actions are the most emotionally salient aspects of the situation. Other aspects of the situation-such as the presence of bystanders and the physical environment, are considered peripheral because they capture less of the victim's attention.

Pilot research carried out at the University of Leicester has found the first support that salient and peripheral information about a sexual assault is remembered differently when people are under the influence of alcohol. As previous research-quite surprisingly-has not examined this phenomenon, research is needed to better understand the relationship between alcohol intoxication, information salience, and memory for sexual assault. As such, a set of 3 interrelated experiments are planned.

In all 3 experiments, female participants will read a sexual assault scenario. Participant alcohol intoxication level whist reading the scenario will be experimentally controlled. 24 hours later participants will have their recognition memory for the scenario tested.

In the first experiment, the memories of participants who were given different doses of alcohol will be examined to see if they differ in terms of their accuracy. We will test whether there is a difference in remembering the scenario perpetrator as a consequence of alcohol dose. Additionally, the qualitative characteristics of memories for the hypothetical sexual assault, such as the vividness of the memory, how much participants feel they are reliving the memory as they recall it, and so on, will be examined in relation to alcohol dose.

The second experiment will build upon the results of the first experiment by examining whether intoxicated participants provide less accurate information when they are administered the Cognitive Interview. It is important to examine the accuracy of sexual assault memories using the Cognitive Interview because it is a forensic interview technique that is used by criminal investigators.

The third experiment examines whether participants who were under the influence of alcohol whilst reading the scenario are more susceptible to memory distortion. Victims frequently delay reporting sexual assault to the police. Delayed reporting is potentially problematic because previous research has found that delayed reports increases one's susceptibility to memory distortion. Therefore, it is important to assess whether alcohol intoxication leads to memory distortion more often than when the victim is not intoxicated.

In sum, the proposed research aims to describe and predict when victims of sexual assault who are under the influence of alcohol will accurately remember forensically relevant information. This project may have far reaching implications for sexual assault victims, public safety, and public policy.

A staggering number of crimes involve alcohol. Sexual assault is especially likely to involve victims and perpetrators who are under the influence. One problem the legal system faces in handling these cases is ascertaining whether victims can remember essential information. Legal officials commonly feel the following concern, which was shared by a detective:

"Intoxicated victims. Advocates and SANEs [Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners] get frustrated when we can't move forward with an investigation, but sometimes we can't because the victim doesn't remember what happened or there are inconsistencies [in her story]."

Given that alcohol is often antecedent to sexual assault--and that about only 1 in 10 cases reported to the police in the UK result in a conviction--it is important to study the relationship between alcohol intoxication and memory for sexual assault. To date, no research has examined the extent to which victims of sexual assault remember essential information about the crime, and systematic work of this kind is needed because detecting and prosecuting sex crimes is enormously costly, both to victims and society. First, a sex offender tends to commit a large number of crimes before being caught; hence, it is important to thoroughly obtain information from victims to detect and apprehend offenders as soon as possible. For example, polygraph interviews conducted with imprisoned sex offenders who had fewer than two known victims found that these offenders actually had an average of 110 victims and 318 offenses. Second, the Home Office estimates that the total cost of sexual offences is nearly £8.5 billion per year. Most of these costs relate to helping victims overcome trauma. Therefore, we need to apprehend a given offender as soon as possible reduce the number of people who are victimised. Lastly, intoxicated victims are currently a 'hot topic' because there is little to no research to guide police interview practice. Thus, the proposed research is an important first step in describing and predicting memory accuracy in victims who were under the influence at the time of the assault.

The proposed research may also contribute to reducing wrongful convictions. About 25 people every year in the UK receive between £500,000 and £1 million each because they were wrongfully convicted of crimes that they did not commit according to a 2010 UK Law Commission report (Consultation Report 190). Research in the US and in the UK has found that mistaken eyewitness evidence is the leading factor in cases of wrongful conviction. The proposed research may lead to the development of interview techniques that help prevent eyewitnesses from making preventable mistakes in their testimony. Additionally, by studying the characteristics of true and false memories (Experiment 1, using the AMQ) it may be possible to develop techniques for distinguishing between true and false memories in witnesses who were intoxicated.

The proposed research will measure memory accuracy as a function of alcohol dosage and blood alcohol level. As a result, we will be able to describe the dose dependent relationship between memory accuracy and alcohol intake. What is more, we will be able to describe how memory for the perpetrator versus memory for other aspects of the rape scenario varies in relation to alcohol dose. If memory does vary in accordance with AMT, this is important information to disseminate to police investigators. Namely, it would encourage investigators to interview victims who were intoxicated thoroughly because they may remember critical details about the perpetrator that could lead to an arrest. Thorough interviewing may also uncover information about the quality of the memory which, given the proposed research is carried out, could be used to index its reliability.