Week 8 - Eyewitness Testimony Flashcards
Factors that make eyewitness testimony unreliable
Anxiety/Stress, presence of a weapon, suggestive questions, misinformation effect, age, race
three general dependent variables in eyewitness studies
Recall of the event/crime
- Open-ended recall and free narrative
- Direct question recall
Recall of the target/culprit
- Open-ended recall and free narrative
- Direct question recall
Recognition of the target/culprit
- Lineup
Study on police techniques used to interview eyewitnesses (Fisher et al. 1987)
- Frequent interruption of witnesses during open-ended recall
- Use of very short, specific questions
- Questions asked in a predetermined or random order that was inconsistent with the information the witness was providing at the time or completely irrelevant
- Found that officers tend to be impatient
memory conformity
Witnesses can be contaminated by information they may become aware of from other witnesses
Misinformation Effect
witness who is presented with inaccurate information after an event will incorporate that misinformation in a subsequent recall task
Misinformation acceptance hypothesis (McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985)
Incorrect information is provided because the witness guessed what the officer or experimenter wants the response to be
Source misattribution hypothesis (Lindsay, 1994)
- Where the witness has two memories, the original and the misinformation
- Witness cannot remember where each memory originated or the source of each
Memory impairment hypothesis (Loftus, 1979)
The original memory is replaced with the new, incorrect, information
Hypnotically refreshed memory
where a hypnotized person is able to produce a greater number of details than a person who has not been hypnotized
Factors that can influence whether hypnosis can be induced (Spiegel & Spiegel, 1987)
- The degree of trust the witness places in the hypnotist
- The witness’s willingness to be hypnotized
- The witness’s belief in hypnosis
- The seriousness of the context for being hypnotized
The Cognitive Interview
Has been developed based on the principles of memory storage and retrieval
The original cognitive interview (Geiselman & al. 1986)
- Reinstating the context
- Reporting everything
- Reversing order
- Changing perspective
The enhanced cognitive interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992)
- Rapport building
- Supportive interviewer behaviour
- Transfer of control
- Focused retrieval
- Witness-compatible questioning
False memory syndrome
describe client’s false beliefs that they were sexually abused as children, having no memories of this abuse until they enter therapy to deal with some other psychological problem such as depression or substance abuse
five criteria for determining the veracity of a recovered memory (Lindsay & Read, 1995)
- Age of the complainant at the time of the alleged abuse
- Techniques used to recover memory
- Similarity of reports across interview sessions
- Motivation for recall
- Time elapsed since the alleged abuse
Study on the accuracy of descriptors (Yarmey & Yarmey, 1997)
- Accuracy highest for hair colour and the type of clothing worn below the waist
- Difficulty in reporting weight, eye colour. and type of footwear
Recognition Memory tests
- Video surveillance records
- Voice identification
- Live lineups or photo arrays
Suspect v. Culprit
- Suspect: may be innocent or guilty for the crime
- Culprit: individual who committed the crime
Use of distractors or foil
- A similarity-to-suspect strategy
- A match-to-description strategy
The suspect should not stand out from the other members of the line up - ensures fairness
Lineup with target present
- Correct identification: eyewitness identifies the target
- Foil identification (error): eyewitness identifies a foil/distractor as the target
- False rejection (error): eyewitness states that the target is absent
Lineup with target absent
- Correct rejection: eyewitness states that the target is absent
- Foil or False identification (error): eyewitness identifies a foil/distractor as the target (note: since there is no target in the lineup, any identification is an error)
Implications of identification errors in real life (Wells & Turtle, 1986)
- Foil identification: error known to the police - may question the accuracy of the witness
- False rejection: unknown error to the police - guilty suspect goes free
- False identification (i.e., identifying an innocent suspect as the culprit): unknown error to the police - guilty suspect goes free & innocent may be prosecuted
(Turtle et al., 2003) Photo arrays are preferable to live lineups because:
- Less time-consuming to put together
- Portable
- No right to counsel for the suspect
- Photos are static (suspect cant draw attention to themself)
- Reduced anxiety for eyewitness
Lineup presentation formats
- Simultaneous lineup: presenting all lineup members at one time to the witness
- Relative judgment
- Sequential lineup: presenting members of the lineup one at a time
- Absolute judgment
Showup
showing one person to the witness: the suspect
- Fear that the witness won’t be alive by the time a lineup is put together
- The witness and culprit is still at the crime scene, everything is very fresh
Disadvantage: witness knows that this is the police’s suspect – bias, pressure to confirm for witness
Walk-by
Taking the witness to a public location where the suspect is likely to be
- Used when police have no suspects (?)
- Can be used before a more formal lineup
Are confident witnesses accurate? (Wells & Bradfield,1998)
- Small positive correlation between confidence and accuracy
- Accurate when the confidence is asserted immediately
- Confirming feedback
- Disconfirming feedback
- No feedback
The group who received confirming feedback from police reported more confidence and having better view of the crime/culprit – their confidence affected other aspects of their recognition
Weapon focus
Cue-utilization: high emotional arousal decreases capacity to pay attention to details – the weapon will be encoded instead of peripheral info
Unusualness hypothesis: weapons are unusual – attracts attention and decreases chances of encoding other info
