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Forensic Psychology > Eyewitness Testimony > Flashcards

Eyewitness Testimony Flashcards

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1
Q

Miscarriages of Justice

A

Eyewitness testimony errors involved in 75% of DNA exoneration cases

Eyewitness mistaken identification

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2
Q

Eyewitness testimony is important

A

May be only evidence available if forensic is absent

Witnesses can identify and describe suspects to help with future investigations

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3
Q

Eyewitness Testimony is persuasive

A

Eyewitness Testimony 78%
Fingerprints 70%
Polygraph 53%
Handwriting 34%

Jurors, judges and general public have limited knowledge of factors affecting eye witness testimony (Magnussen et al 2010)

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4
Q

Eyewitness Testimony is error prone

A

Recorded crime on TV (Buckhout,1980)

2000 people rang in, but 1800 made incorrect ID.

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5
Q

Megreya & Burton (2008)

A

Innocent suspect number 4 being chosen the most.

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6
Q

Why are eyewitness unreliable?

A

Decision to attend to and encode stimulus properties - Poor encoding

Incorporate into internal representation (Schema) - Stereotypes and prejudice.

Integrate representation with additional information & regenerate representation (visualise) - Misleading information

Response - demand characteristics

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7
Q

Factors that affect eyewitness accuracy

A

Eyewitness factors: emotional state, intoxication

Perpetrator factors: disguise, facial distinctiveness

Situtation factors: exposure duration, distance, retention interval

System variables: size, structure, and selection of fillers.
Cognitive interviews: procedures and training

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8
Q

Encoding:
Ornstein et al, 2006
Holst and Pezdek 1992

A

We remember more of an event, the more we know about it in advance (Ornstein et al, 2006)

We remember more information that is consistent with our scripts (Holst and Pezdek, 1992).

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9
Q

Change Blindness

A

Change blindness correlates with memory (Levin et al 2002) - Primed 65% versus not primed (12.5%).

Explanations (Simons,2000)
Overwriting, first impressions, nothing is stored, storage but no comparison and feature combination (Dog & Duck combined).

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10
Q

Situation and perpetrator factors

A

Duration of exposure (Memon et al 2003)

distance from incident (Lindsay et al 2008)

Awareness of the incident

Facial distinctiveness (Busey & Tunnicliff, 1999)

Disguises (Patterson & Baddeley, 1977).

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11
Q

Perps change of appearance and disguises

A
  • Offender’s changed appearance and disguises

Study phase: Participants viewed a staged robbery. For 1/2 of the particpants the robber wore knit pullover cap.

Test phase: Identified perpetrator from video lineup 45% no hat group vs 27% hat group.

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12
Q

Witness Factors

A

High stress negatively impacts memory (Deffenbacher et al, 2004)
- Soldier Study (Morgan et al 2004).
Ageing effect (Memon et al 2003).

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13
Q

Witness Intoxication

A

Reduced attentional capacity

Alcohol myopia theory suggests that alcohol increases focus on central detail (Josephs,1990).

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14
Q

Storage

A

Retention interval: delay decreases the amount of information that can be recalled

Post event suggestion

  • Exposure to media report
  • Co-witness discussions
  • Choice blindness
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15
Q

Retention Interval:
Face Recognition (Wells et al 2006)
Event details

A

Face Recognition

  • Immediate, longer delays
  • Fewer correct Ids
  • Increase in false Ids

Event details

  • Immediate vs 4 week delay
  • Reduction in number of recalled facts
  • % error consistent

Woman assaulted 36 years ago.

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16
Q

Post event suggestion & misinformation

A

Many witnesses will see or read news of events.

  • Recall vs what really happened
  • Proneness to false memory associated with personality traits (Ost, Granhag & Hjelmsater, 2007).

Delay between event and information plays a role in acceptance of misleading suggestions -
Susceptibility of memories to retroactive interference increase as memories are forgotten (Reyna, 1995)

17
Q

Post event suggestion & misinformation P2.

A

86% of witness discuss their memory with co-witnesses

  • Causes conformity (Gabbert et al 2004)
  • Can cause misinformation (Wright et al, 2000).
18
Q

Difficulty detecting manipulation of a choice they made (Sagana et al, 2014).

A

Blindness for recognition decisions, this is the person you selected.

39 - 68% of detections remained undetected

Many people think they would be able to detect this manipulation

19
Q

Eyewitness Memory Typical reporting

A

Reported . Accuracy

Gender 100% 100%
Age . 55% . 38%
Speech . 15% 84%
Height . 75% . 44%

20
Q

Verbal Overshadowing

A

Most common: Hair Style

Less common: eye colour and eye shape, nose mouth and teeth.

Rarely mentioned cheek, chin and forehead

21
Q

Verbal Overshadowing Pt.2

A

When describing a face you become less accurate at recognising it subsequently (Schooler et al, 1990) reduction of 26%

(Meissner & Brigham, 2001) more likely to occur when identification immediately followed the description.

22
Q

Verbal Shadowing: Why does this occur? Schooler et al, 1990

A

No relationship between description quality and recognition performance.

Specific to verbal description, mentally revisualising the face does not interfere with recognition.

23
Q

Expert Processing

A

Unconscious
Non-verbal
Holistic
Good for face perception

24
Q

Inexpert Processing

A 
Conscious
Verbal
Featural
Bad for face perception
Small Perceptual field
25
Q

Mugshots

A

Repeated exposure to a suspect increases probability of identification and confidence (Memon et al, 2002) - even if wrong

Building face composites can harm line up identification performance (Wells, Charman & Olson, 2005) - Reduction in chance of later identifying the original face.

26
Q

Similarity of fillers in line ups

A

Too highly similar = difficulty in identifying the suspect.

Moderately similar = higher identification and fewer false positives (Fitzgerald, Oriet & Price, 2015)

27
Q

Face Composite

A

Combining face composites yields improvements in face likeness (Bruce et al 2003).

  • morphy of all four composites created a better likeness that individuals composites.
  • 4 morphs performed better (produced more correct choices and fewer false positives) than individuals.
28
Q

Enhanced cognitive view

A

Mental context reinstatement, report everything, recall in a variety of temporal orders and change perspective.

29
Q

Enhanced Cognitive View: several stages of training

A

Very few police offices engage in it

83% interviews in UK are not done with the cognitive view (time consuming and pressures of resources are too great).

30
Q

Moving towards proactive approach: Post diction variables

A

Measurable variables that correlate with eyewitness accuracy

  1. Individual differences
  2. Self report decision processes
  3. Response latency (how long to make identification
31
Q

Time Estimation

A

People vary hugely in time estimates, some being really poor judger of time (16% to 496% of actual duration).
But consistent across time estimations tasks.

32
Q

Face identification

A

Self-report measures of face recognition skill linked with identification accuracy for culprit (Olsson & Juslin,1999).

Self reports are subjective

33
Q

Eyewitness Testimony Summary

A
  1. Estimator variables (eyewitness, perp, situation)
  2. System Variables (legal & judicial process).
  3. Postdiction variables (measurable indicators of accuracy).
34
Q

Eyewitness Testimony Summary: Psychologists have identified many factors that affect eyewitness testimony

A

Developed techniques to improve construction of photofits

Developed better line up procedures (Wells, Small, Penrod et al 1998

Developed the cognitive interview

Forensic Psychology (8 decks)

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