Non-leading and non-suggestive questions minimize what?

• A. False reports
• B. The misinformation effect
• C. Recantations
• D. Baseless reports

Answer: (B)

Neutral, non-leading questioning protects memory accuracy by reducing the influence of external information on what a person recalls. This directly targets the misinformation effect, the tendency for post-event information to distort memory of what actually happened. When interviews are open-ended and neutral, there’s less opportunity to implant details or alter the witness’s memory, so recall stays closer to the original event. Other outcomes described—false reports, recantations, and baseless reports—aren’t specifically about memory distortion from post-event information, so they aren’t best explained by this interviewing effect.