Eyewitness Memory PDF

Eyewitness Memory “There is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant, and says ‘That’s the one!’”- William J. Brennan, Supreme Court Justice The Case of Ronald Cotton Post-Identification Feedback Effect: Eyewitnesses receiving...

Eyewitness Memory “There is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant, and says ‘That’s the one!’”- William J. Brennan, Supreme Court Justice The Case of Ronald Cotton Post-Identification Feedback Effect: Eyewitnesses receiving confirming feedback after an identification mistakenly believed they had been very confident in the accuracy of their identification before receiving feedback Setting the Stage • 77,000 suspects are arrested each year after being identified by eyewitnesses • Jury more likely to convict with eyewitness testimony, likelihood increases if eyewitness appears highly confident of their testimony • As many as 10,000 people per year be convicted wrongfully on basis of mistaken eyewitness testimony • 375 cases overturned by DNA evidence to date, more than ¾ involved eyewitness errors What influences the accuracy of eyewitness memory? https://innocenceproject.org/exonerate/ What influences the accuracy of eyewitness memory? How might the mental state of the eyewitness impact their memory? • High levels of stress (at encoding and retrieval) have a negative impact on eyewitness memory How might aspects of the environment impact eyewitness memory? • Weapon Focus Effect: Finding that eyewitnesses pay so much attention to the presence of a weapon that they ignore other details (including faces) and subsequently cannot remember them • Unconscious Transference: Tendency of eyewitnesses to misidentify a familiar (but innocent) face as being the person responsible for a crime How might characteristics of the culprit impact eyewitness memory? • Own-Age Bias: Recognition memory for own-age faces is generally more accurate than for other-age faces • Other-Race Effect: Recognition memory for same-race faces is generally more accurate than for other-race faces Misinformation Effect: occurs when misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person describes the event later. Blank et al. (2022) Multiple Chances What is the impact of double misinformation on the misinformation effect? Neutralization Modern Misinformation Effect Studies • Blank & Launay (2014): if warned of the presence of misinformation after viewing an event, reduced misinformation effect by between 1/3 and 1/2 of its size (compared to no-warning conditions) • Putnam et al. (2017): Misinformation led to enhanced recognition memory for an event when participants detected changes between the event and the post-event misinformation • Misinformation sometimes acts as a cue that facilitates retrieval of details from the actual event Warnings are great but lack ecological validity. How can we get people to notice the changes without prompting?? Can Questioning Induce Forgetting? • What is Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF)? • Practicing certain items will lead to forgetting of unpracticed related items in the same category (relative to a control) Was there evidence of retrieval-induced forgetting? What kind of haircut did the offender have? RP+ Nrp+ What kind of trousers was the offender wearing? RP- Nrp- Did it extend beyond the practiced category? Camp, Wesstein, & de Bruin (2011) Discussion Questions • The authors offer two possible explanations for the effect: inhibition or interference. How do they differ? Are you more inclined to believe one over the other? Why? • The authors end by saying, “using questions that induce competition between offender characteristics should be avoided during eyewitness interviews…” without offering any alternatives. What do you think is an alternative approach to this practice? Why? “An eyewitness’s confidence is never a good predictor of his or her identification accuracy.” • 82% of undergraduates agreed with this statement (Brewin et al., 2019) • Another perspective? How can we improve eyewitness memory? • Don’t ask leading questions in interviews • Lineups • • • • Make them double-blind! Caution witnesses that the suspect may not be in the lineup at all Ensure all people in lineup are reasonably similar to one another Simultaneous vs. Sequential • Generally, adopt more stringent criterion with sequential lineups • Advise jurors that eyewitness confidence ≠ eyewitness accuracy Reflection! • There have been a large number of reports of people unjustly imprisoned because of errors in eyewitness testimony, with more cases being reported every day, based on DNA evidence. Given this situation, how would you react to the proposal that eyewitness testimony no longer be admitted as evidence in courts of law?