Serial reproduction of traumatic events: does the chain unravel?

Our goal in this paper is to show that a careful analysis of recall accuracy within a serial reproduction chain can add to a detailed qualitative analysis of the reproductions within the chain. The texts we chose are based on newspaper reports concerning current events, which are far from being mundane: reports of tragic events, even traumatic events. The participants were 216 students who were randomly assigned to 54 four-person reproduction chains, 18 for each of three 160-word texts.