Despite the prevalence of interpreter facilitated interrogations, research has yet to examine the quality of interpreter’s memories for such interrogations. Given interrogations involving interpreters may not be recorded for a variety of reasons, understanding how well interpreters recall the content they interpret is critical. Furthermore, an interpreter is the only person in the room who knows what occurred on both sides of the interrogation.  Research regarding the use of interpreters has primarily focused on questions such as the best place to seat the interpreter during questioning and the importance of building rapport between an interpreter and an interviewee (Houston et al., 2017).

The current study examined how an interpreter’s memory compares to the memory of someone who passively observes an interrogation. We had two competing hypotheses: 1) Interpreters will have impaired recall compared to an observer due to the high cognitive load of interpreting; 2) Interpreters will have enhanced recall compared to an observer due to interpreters processing the interrogation content more deeply. Additionally, the time between the interrogation and recall test was manipulated to determine how memory performance varies with a delay. Finally, we tested the utility of a Structure Briefing, which was designed to improve participants’ recall of the interrogation. The Structure Briefing provided participants with information on the sequence of topics that the interrogator planned to address with the suspect and provided minimal case facts. The present study utilized a 2 (Recall Timing: Immediate (10 minutes) vs. Delayed (2 hours) x 2 (Pre-interrogation Structure Briefing: Absent vs. Present) x 2 (Role: Interpreter vs. Observer) x 2 (Stimulus: Script A vs. Script B) mixed design with Structure Briefing and Role manipulated between participants. 

All sessions took place virtually using Zoom and Qualtrics Survey System. Participants (N= 224) entered the Zoom call and were greeted by an experimenter who consented them. The interrogations began with a detective (played by a research assistant), who built rapport and read the Structure Briefing to participants who were assigned to receive it. During the interrogations, the detectives spoke English, the suspects (also played by research assistants) spoke Spanish, and the interpreter interpreted back and forth between them. Both interrogations were scripted and based on real-life interrogations.

Following the two interrogations, participants completed a demographics survey which served as a 10-minute delay before their memory test on the second interrogation. Next, participants had a short break, after which participants completed a language assessment and language history questionnaire. After these tasks, participants completed a memory test about the first interrogation (2-hour delay). Both memory tests were similar in structure and question-type (e.g., free recall, cued recall, source memory, etc.). After the second memory test, participants completed a survey about their experiences during the study, were debriefed, and compensated.

Analyses revealed that observers and interpreters did not differ in their recall performance. Results and analyses will be discussed in detail, as well as implications and future directions.