Legal Professional Opinions on the Smallest Effect Size of Interest in False Memory Research
Creators: name: Riesthuis, Paul
name: Otgaar, Henry
name: Chin, Jason
name: Goldfarb, Deborah
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Social Statistics
subject: Quantitative Psychology
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: How do we determine what effect size (i.e., magnitude of a phenomenon) is of interest when we are designing and interpreting studies? One way is to define the smallest effect that we personally find interesting or has practical and/or theoretical implications. This effect is also known as the Smallest Effect Size of Interest (SESOI; Lakens, 2014). Careful consideration of the SESOI is vital for research areas with practical consequences as it can assist in establishing the real world implications of studies. One such area is research on false memories which refer to memories of events/details that were not experienced (Brainerd &amp; Reyna, 2005). Research examining what factors can affect the susceptibility of false memory formation can have consequences in applied areas such as the courtroom (Howe &amp; Knott, 2015). For instance, in the legal arena, if testimonies are elicited using suggestive interviewing techniques, it is possible that testimonies made by witnesses, suspects, and/or victims will be unreliable and thus of little use to the legal system. Moreover, if those unreliable testimonies are uncritically accepted by triers of fact, legal decision-making might be negatively affected by these testimonies. As a result, it is important to know what the SESOI is for false memories in practice because that will allow researchers to design their studies to be able to detect such an effect. A recent study by Riesthuis and colleagues (2021) examined what memory researchers considered the SESOI to be for several well-known methods examining different types of false memories: Spontaneous (Deese, 1959; Roediger &amp; McDermott, 1995; DRM paradigm), external misinformation (Loftus, 2005; misinformation paradigm), and internal misinformation (Ackil &amp; Zaragoza, 1998; forced fabrication paradigm). To examine this, they presented memory researchers with various hypothetical basic research designs and procedures, and the designs, procedures, and results of highly cited scientific papers for each type of false memory. Then, the experts were asked what they would consider the SESOI to be for practical and theoretical implications. Their main findings were that many experts tended to accept “any difference that leads to p &lt; .05” as their SESOI and that there was no general consensus about the SESOI within and across paradigms. In other words, these results suggest that there was no consensus among memory researchers about the SESOI and that many researchers were misinformed about the general concept of a SESOI. Another way to establish the SESOI for false memory research is by asking legal professionals what effect they would deem interesting or practically relevant for the courtroom. Accordingly, the main question of the present study is what legal professionals consider the SESOI to be for false memory research.