Abstract

Despite suspects and defence counsels’ correction power, distortions of paper records are still problematic. Therefore, this study examined distortion correction performance of the suspect and defence counsel. In study 1, total 116 undergraduate students were allocated into one of the four conditions (‘innocent/commission’, ‘innocent/omission’, ‘deceptive/commission’, ‘deceptive/omission’), then asked to correct distortions. In study 2, total 45 lawyers were allocated into condition of ‘commission’ or ‘omission’, then asked to correct distortions. In study 3, the results of two preceding studies were compared. The results showed that (1) Innocent student groups found more distortions than deceptive groups. (2) Omission correction scores were lower than commission correction scores in all groups(students․lawyers). (3) The failures mainly result from the failures of finding rather than failures of estimating in all groups(students․lawyers). (4) The score differences between innocent and deceptive student groups were lower in omission correction than in commission correction. (5) No significant differences were found between the correction performances of laypersons and lawyers. In the conclusion, implications and limitations of the study were disscussed along with some improvement methods.