Forensic - Area 2 Flashcards
What are patent fingerprints ?
They are visible to the naked eye and are often made in blood or ink, etc. They require little collected as they can be easily photographed.
What are latent fingerprints ?
They are impressions of skins that are transferred to another surface through the body natural oils and sweat. They are not visible to the naked eye so need specialist analysation and this may lead to more mistakes.
What is bottom up processing ?
Purely data driven, so you see what you get.
What is top down processing ?
What enters our eyes is translated first by our cognition and prior experience and expectation.
What type of processing does fingerprint analysis need to be ?
Needs to be bottom up for looking at the ridges of fingerprints. This makes the analysis more objective and less open to bias.
What did Kassin et al look at and state about fingerprint analysis ?
Looked at the Brandon Mayfield case and other cases to prove that forensic science is not infallible (science can make mistakes).
What did Hamikian et al state about the reliability of forensic science ?
“Genetics if innocence” found several types of forensic science testimonies had found to have convicted innocent individuals.
38% incorrectly convicted blood analysis.
What are some motivating factors for forensic science ?
Public interest
justice for the victime
Reputation
Type of victim (child or vulnerable)
Emotional motivation
Cognitive closure
Desire for consensus
What did Charlton look at ?
Looked at the presence of emotions in fingerprint examinations would influence the analysis. Using 13 experienced fingerprint experts who were asked “How did you feel about succeeding in matching prints?”
What did Charlton find ?
Found 5 main themes associated with emotion, such as emotions feelings and need for closure and satisfaction associated with catching criminals.
What did Dror look at ?
Investigated if some crimes are motivated for experts than others because of the emotional context. 27 volunteer uni students looking at high vs low emotional context.
What did Dror find ?
Found non ambiguous pairs were not affected by emotional context but ambiguous pairs were influenced by contextual information of emotional circumstances.
What did Kruglanski look at ?
Looked at if need for closure was high, the quicker judgement are made with more confidence. When need is low, the larger the number of possibilities are considered and better decision making occurs.
What did Kruglanski suggest ?
Suggests that high profile cases with strong motivation for closure, the use of contextual evidence would create potential for faulty yet confident fingerprint identification.
What did Kahneman look at ?
Explained human decision making is not rational as we would like to believe it to be and people make systematic and unitentional errors in judgement.
