Missing Persons, Expectations, and Vigilance Project

The purpose of this research explore how expectations of encounter, memory decay and attention influence the ability of individuals to report sightings of missing persons. There has been some lab-based evidence that expectations of expectations of encounter is linked with reported missing person sightings. We are interested in replicating and extending these findings. Second, we are interested in the role that that sustained attention (through a vigilance task) has on the likelihood of of missing persons recovery. Previous missing persons studies manipulating expectations of encounter solely used a PPM paradigm. In this study we will manipulate whether the participants are given a PPM or vigilance (sustained attention) paradigm. Additionally, we will manipulate the retention interval.