Expert Witness and Eye Witness Memory

Question 1

Expert witness definition

Answer 1

A person with specific knowledge in a particular subject relating to the criminal case.

Question 2

Conley Case

Answer 2

Policemen in Boston were chasing a criminal. Black policeman was shot by white policeman as they thought he was suspect since they were all in plain clothes

Question 3

Chabris et al (2011)

Answer 3

Experimental re-inactment of the Conley case. At the side was a fight between students. At night only 35% said they saw the fight and at day about 56%.

Question 4

Kassin et al (2001)

Answer 4

Surveyed 64 psychologists about 30 eyewitness phenomena including stress, weapon focus, line-ups etc.

Question 5

Mars and Farmville Murders

Answer 5

Horror-core musician that acted as an expert witness in the Farmville Murders, as the murderer was a fan of his music so he could give in depth on what methods could have been inspired by him.

Question 6

Eyewitness definition

Answer 6

The source of evidence - what they saw, what they heard, what they know first hand.

Question 7

Testimony definition

Answer 7

Evidence given by a witness/victim, usually under oath giving their recollections of circumstances and descriptions of events and people involved.
Not opinion.

Question 8

Innocence Project

Answer 8

Using DNA analysis on old solved cases to test whether the person arrested through eyewitness testimony was guilty

Question 9

Garrett (2017)

Answer 9

Misunderstanding of how memory works can lead to a wrongful conviction.

Question 10

Wells et al (1998)

Answer 10

Mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more wrongful convictions than all the others combined.

Found 40 criminal cases where DNA proved innocence, and 36 of the cases involved at least 1 eyewitness.

Question 11

Munsterberg (1908)

Answer 11

Identified drawbacks of eyewitness testimony.

More confident people tend to be believed more even if less accurate.

Question 12

Neisser and Winograd (1988)

Answer 12

Ecological approaches to memory.

Question 13

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Answer 13

Post event factors

Question 14

Wells (1978)

Answer 14

System-Estimator Variables

Estimator variables - Uncontrollable, therefore their impact has to be estimated.
System variables - Procedures can produce or prevent systematic bias.

Question 15

Bartlett (1935)

Answer 15

Our memories are records of our experiences and interpretations of events, not records of the events themselves. They are reconstructed.

Question 16

Things that could effect encoding of an episodic memory

Answer 16

1. Stress
2. Attention
3. Stereotyping
4. Intoxication

Question 17

Things that effect the storage of an episodic memory

Answer 17

1. Post-event information
2. Delay
3. Trauma

Question 18

Things that effect the retrieval of an episodic memory

Answer 18

1. Investigative procedure

2. Questioning techniques

Question 19

Valentine and Mesout (2009)

Answer 19

Stress associated with worse recall.

Question 20

Morgan et al (2013)

Answer 20

Did a mock prisoner of war camp and found that prisoners were more susceptible to false information

Question 21

Hope et al (2016)

Answer 21

Observers have better recall than those directly at risk in simulated armed police operations

Question 22

Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

Answer 22

Witnesses to a real crime showed a positive relationship between stress and accurate recall even after 5 months

Question 23

Fawcett et al (2013)

Answer 23

Weapon focus - tendency to forget other details when weapon is present

Question 24

Erickson et al (2014)

Answer 24

Unusualness hypothesis - Memory not effected by the weapon but rather unusualness.

Participants who served drinks to a man with either a gun, an empty glass or a rubber chicken were more likely to chose an innocent suspect more often after seeing either the gun or the chicken, but were no less likely to correctly choose the perpetrator after seeing the chicken.

Question 25

Tuckey and Brewer (2003)

Answer 25

Tendency to misremember schema incongruent information about crimes.

Question 26

Deffenbacher (1983)

Answer 26

10 studies show increased or stable accuracy with higher levels while 11 show the opposite.

Question 27

Deffenbacher et al (2004)

Answer 27

High levels of stress impaired accuracy and recall on both types of eyewitness memory

Question 28

Shapiro and Penrod (1986)

Answer 28

Hit rate increases with time spent viewing the target. However, increased exposure increases false alarms

Question 29

Read (1995)

Answer 29

Longer exposure may bias people’s assumptions about what they should remember.

Question 30

Memon, Hope and Bull (2003)

Answer 30

Simulated a crime and manipulated witness exposure. Longer exposure caused higher accuracy but also inflated witness confidence.

Question 31

Memon et al (2003)

Answer 31

90% of mock witness said they expected the culprit to be present in line-up

Question 32

Wells (1993)

Answer 32

54% of those who correctly identified the culprit in a line-up said they’d have identified someone else if culprit wasn’t present.