12. Eyewitness testimony

Question 1

Inattentional blindness

Answer 1

The failure to perceive the appearance of an unexpected object in the visual environment.

It is often assumed that inattentional blindness and change blindness are very similar phenomena. It is certainly the case that attentional failures are frequently involved. However, in general terms, more complex processing is typically required to avoid change blindness than to avoid inattentional blindness

Question 2

Change blindness

Answer 2

failure to detect changes in an object

EX: In the movie Grease, while John Travolta is singing, Greased Lightning, his socks change color several times between black and white.

Question 3

Change blindness blindness

Answer 3

individuals’ exaggerated belief that they can detect visual changes and so avoid change blindness.

Question 4

Confirmation bias

Answer 4

Distortions of memory caused by the influence of expectations concerning what is likely to have happened.

Question 5

Dud effect

Answer 5

An eyewitness’s increased confidence in his/her mistaken when the lineup includes individuals very dissimilar to the culprit.

Question 6

Own-age bias

Answer 6

the tendency for eyewitnesses to identify individuals of the same age as themselves for accurately than those much older or younger.

Question 7

Prosopagnosia

Answer 7

A condition, also known as face-blindness, in which there is extremely poor face recognition combined with reasonable ability to recognize other objects.

Question 8

Unconscious transference

Answer 8

The tendency of eyewitnesses to misidentify a familiar (but innocent) face as belonging to the culprit.

Question 9

Verbal overshadowing

Answer 9

The reduction in recognition memory for faces that often occurs when eyewitnesses provide verbal descriptions of those faces before the recognition-memory test.

Question 10

Cross-race effect

Answer 10

The finding that recognition memory for same-race faces is generally more accurate than for cross-race faces.