area 2 forensic psychology

Question 1

what are patent prints?

Answer 1

visible to the naked eye

Question 2

what are latent prints?

Answer 2

not visible so require alternative light sources

Question 3

what is top down processing?

Answer 3

what enters our eye is translated first by our cognition and prior experience. more subjective as contextual information is used

Question 4

what is bottom down processing?

Answer 4

purely data driven what you see is what you get

Question 5

what is significant about the brandon mayfield case?

Answer 5

he was wrongly identified to one of the prints left at the scene of the madrid train bombing, recently converted to Muslim

Question 6

what did kassin find?

Answer 6

mayfield case plus others show forensic evidence isn’t infallible

Question 7

what did hampikian find?

Answer 7

found several types of testimony had convicted innocent people
38% contained incorrect blood analysis#
2% incorrect fingerprints

Question 8

what are motivating factors in fingerprint analysis?

Answer 8

emotional motivation- emotional response leads to strong desire to find offender
cognitive closure- need to have a definitive conclusion

Question 9

what did charlton study?

Answer 9

whether emotions would influence fingerprint analysis, used semi structured interviews of 13 experienced experts.
asked how they felt about succeding in mathcing the prints

Question 10

what did charlton find?

Answer 10

reward of job satisfaction and satisfaction with catching criminals among 5 themes associated with emotion and fingerprint analysis. influenced by psychological factors which can lead to errors

Question 11

what did dror study?

Answer 11

if some types of crime are more motivating than others because of emotional context.
used 27 volunteered students, had to match fingerprints that were either ambiguous or unambiguous after looking at photo and story for either a high or low emotional context crime.

Question 12

what did dror find?

Answer 12

in the non ambiguous pairs the participants were unaffected by the emotional context, however in the ambiguous pairs participants were influenced

Question 13

what did kruglanski find?

Answer 13

found that when the need for cognitive closure is high,quicker judgement are made however when the need is low more possibilities are taken into account. unfounded confidence paradox- faulty yet confident fingerprint analysis

Question 14

what did tversky and kahnmen find?

Answer 14

explain decision making as not nearly as rational as we would like it to be and we make unintentional errors

Question 15

what is contextual bias?

Answer 15

when irrelevant information about an event or the way information is presented influences reasoning

Question 16

what is confrontational bias?

Answer 16

occurs when we interpret information or look for evidence in a way that confirms preexisting beliefs

Question 17

what is the background of hall and player?

Answer 17

no matter how experienced analysts are they are still prone to making mistakes. factors such as pressure and circumstances surrounding a case can bias the results, especially as the analysts sees a crime report

Question 18

what is the aim of hall and player?

Answer 18

to test the effects of context on fingerprint identification
does the report affect interp of a poor qual mark
does context affect the analysts

Question 19

sample of hall and player?

Answer 19

self selected 70 MET finger print analysts
experience ranged from les than 3 months to 30yrs

Question 20

research method of hall and player?

Answer 20

field/lab experiment

Question 21

IV of hall and player?

Answer 21

IV- low or high emotional context

Question 22

DV’s of hall and player?

Answer 22

DV1- match or no match, insufficient, insufficient detail
DV2- read crime report prior to identification or not
DV3- own judgment as whether the report had affected their analysis and if they would feel confident presenting it in court

Question 23

what method was used in hall and player after the experiment?

Answer 23

a questionare

Question 24

what is the procedure of hall and player?

Answer 24

were in a typical fingerprint examination room in new Scotland yard asked to treat it like a normal day and not discuss the prints.
they were assigned to either low emotional context reffering to £50 forgery crime as it is victimless or a high emotinal context referring to a murder case by shots

Question 25

what did participants do after being assigned to the low or high emotional context condition?

Answer 25

they were given an envelope containing fingerprints of a right forefinger and asked their expert opinion to consider whether it was a match any of the fingerprints given to them on a 10 fingerprint form

Question 26

what was the post experiment questioniare?

Answer 26

they completed it about demographic info
years of experience
if they had presented evidence in court
whether they had refer to report of crime prior
whether they thought it had affected their analysis

Question 27

results about the effect of thw written report?

Answer 27

57/70 had read the report prior
30/57 were high ec
52% of high ec felt they were affected by the report
6% of low ec felt affected

Question 28

results about how emotional context influenced analysis?

Answer 28

although some in high ec condition thought it affected them it actually didn’t

Question 29

conclusions of hall and player?

Answer 29

even if they think it has affected their analysis it hasn’t- high ec
some don’t even read the report so are unaffected
experts are probably unaffected due to the amount of training they have on contextual influences

Question 30

what are the applications of topic 2?

Answer 30

training of analysts/ juries
linear sequential unmasking
ACE-V analysis

Question 31

how is ACE-V analysis done/carried out?
(5 steps)

Answer 31

1- examination of the latent print to observe the patterns, sweat pores ect
2- assessment if all causes of distortion and clarity of the print
3- concentrates on the known inked prints, each is examined in detail comparing original
4- 2 prints examined side by side finding features in unknown and known , corresponding features eval
5- all +ve identifications must be verified by a 2nd expert - potentially blind

Question 32

what supports ACE-V analysis?

Answer 32

kahneman states people can make unintentional biases/ errors which can affect analysis and 2 experts reviewing prints lead to less chance of error.

Question 33

how is training of analysists/juries carried out/done?

Answer 33

give them training to deal with emotion
review every 10 pieces of work by the analysists
once a year trained on the consequence of errors/ updates on technique
when newly qualified check all work for 2 months

Question 34

what supports the training if juries and analysists?

Answer 34

kassin- forensic evidence isn’t always infalliable
brandon mayfield- wrongly accused due to faulty fingerprint analysis madrid train bombing

Question 35

how is liner sequential sequential unmasking done?

Answer 35

experts should work in a liner fashiom when analysising evidence. so their reasoning should be from evidence to suspect not the other way round. they should examine the vidence before the case report other evidence is unmaksed as ate as possible/necessary

Question 36

what supports the linear sequential unmaksing method?

Answer 36

bottom up processing- reduces bias so analysis is purely data driven
hall and player- 52% of high ec felt like it affected them