Eyewitnesses show hypermnesia for details about a violent event.

A total of 90 undergraduates watched a videotape that portrayed a burglar breaking into a home and shooting three innocent victims. The 2-min tape contained 47 important violent and nonviolent details. Subjects recalled increasingly more details in each of four successive recall trials, including a trial 48 hr after seeing the tape. Instructions to use context or emotion as retrieval cues did not affect recall gains, and the gains were not the result of increased guessing. We conclude that eyewitness accounts may become more accurate with repeated attempts to recall information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)