Eyewitness Memory

Question 1

What’s the order of a criminal investigation?

Answer 1

Crime event 
Police investigation 
Guilty suspect = target present lineup 
OR 
Innocent suspect = target absent lineup

Question 2

How prominent is eyewitness misidentification?

Answer 2

Played a role in over 70% of convictions

Question 3

What are common beliefs about memory

Answer 3

It works like a video recorder

However, memory is both a reproduction and reconstruction of past events

Question 4

What is the primary effect?

Answer 4

Tendency to remember the first piece of info we encounter better than I of presented later on

Question 5

What is the regency effect?

Answer 5

More recent info is better remembered

Question 6

Loftus and palmer

Answer 6

Experiment 1
- about how fast were the cars going when they hit (contacted, collided, etc) each other

Experiment 2
- did you see any broken glass (there was none but different verbs above affected yes/no)

Question 7

Common misconceptions with eyewitness testimony?

Answer 7

Textbooks - inherently unreliable

Eyewitness memory can be reliable as long as it is not contaminated by other extraneous factors

Therefore crucial to elucidate which factors may or may not affect eyewitness memory

Question 8

What are the stages of memory?

Answer 8

Input
Encoding
Storage
Retrieval

Question 9

What is memory?

Answer 9

The means by which we draw on our past experiences in order to use this info in the present

Question 10

What’s recall?

Answer 10

Measure of memory in which the person must retrieve info learned earlier

Question 11

What is recognition?

Answer 11

Measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned

Question 12

What are estimator variables?

Answer 12

Factors that cannot be controlled by the criminal justice system

Light conditions 
Weapon presence 
Disguise 
Exposure duration 
Stress/arousal 
Eyewitness characteristics
Defendant characteristics

Question 13

What are system variables?

Answer 13

Factors that can be controlled by the criminal justice system

Interviewing procedures
Identification procedures
Lineup instructions, format, and presentation
Facial composite procedures

Question 14

Estimator variables and their effects on encoding?

Answer 14

Light conditions
- correct target present identifications are very unlikely following observations made in low lighting at 20m

Weapon focus effect
- weapon presence often leads to reduced identification accuracy

Disguises
- identification accuracy generally decreases with degree of disguise (e.g. stocking mask, sunglasses)

Question 15

How does storage affect memory?

Answer 15

Retention interval
- Eyewitnesses typically present lower hit rates and higher false alarms with the passage of time.

Co-witness discussion
- co-witnesses can often incorporate external info into their accounts, even if they had not seen that info before

Question 16

How do system variables affect retrieval?

Answer 16

Interviewing procedures

• suggestive interviewing protocols may contaminate eyewitness memory.
• Some techniques can enhance memory recall (cognitive interview)
• cognitive technique
• question type
• rapport building
• room setting

Identification procedures
- elements in the construction and presentation of lineups influence eyewitness decisions

• lineup size
• lineup presentation
• lineup formation (photo, video, live)
• filler selection
• positive identification feedback

Question 17

What is expert testimony?

Answer 17

The delivery to a jury by a qualified research psychologist of info about research and theory on eyewitness behaviour

Based on the assumption that expert testimony will increase juror sensitivity to the factors that influence eyewitness identification performance

Often causes jurors to become overly sceptical of eyewitness evidence

Question 18

What are judicial instructions?

Answer 18

Judge presents the jury with information about the psychology of eyewitness identifications

Typically produces confusion or scepticism

Question 19

What are teaching aids?

Answer 19

PowerPoint preventions in which triers of fact are taught to consider whether:

• the eyewitness interview procedures were conducted properly
• the identification procedures were conducted properly
• there were any factors present during the crime that might have have negatively affected the eyewitness memory

Some initial promising results regarding the evaluation of eyewitness evidence

Question 20

Limitations of eyewitness research?

Answer 20

Lab experiments hardly reproduce the high stakes situations present in eyewitness context

Ppts are many times aware that the study will involve some sort of memory test (deliberate encoding). In real life situations individuals are typically not aware they will witness a crime (incidental encoding).

Most studies include very short retention intervals (time between encoding and retrieval), which compromises on ecological validity given that in many cases witnesses will provide their testimony days or weeks after the crime has occurred.

Question 21

Identification guidelines?

Answer 21

Blind administer, with ID training administers lineup

Tell witness perpetrator may or may not be present

Reasonable size and foil similarity to fill lineup

Record confidence immediately after ID

Videotape the ID process

Question 22

Lineup sizes?

Answer 22

12 - UK
6 - USA
3 - Russia

Question 23

How to do filler selection?

Answer 23

The suspect should not stand out in the lineup

Fillers should her equally good alternatives to the suspect

Question 24

Why is filler selection important?

Answer 24

If fillers do not sufficiently resemble the suspect, it increases the risk that an innocent suspect will be misidentified

If fillers resemble the suspect too strongly, even witnesses with good memory of the witnessed event will be unable to identify the culprit.

Question 25

Lineup administration?

Answer 25

Caution that the offender might not be in the lineup

• they’re not failing if they do not choose someone
• we got the guy. We just need for you to come pick him out of a lineup

Question 26

What’s double blind testing?

Answer 26

Prevent the lineup administrator from unintentionally influencing the outcome of the results

Videotape the ID process

Question 27

Live, photo or video lineups?

Answer 27

Based on available research, there is no reason to believe that live lineups, videotaped lineups, or phot arrays produce substantial differences in identification performance

Question 28

What’s simultaneous presentation?

Answer 28

Lineup members are shown all at once

Allows comparison between members
Theorised to encourage witnesses to select the best match, relative to the others

Question 29

What’s sequential presentation?

Answer 29

Lineup members viewed one at a time

Decision may or may not be made before proceeding
Theorised to discourage comparisons between members, encouraging witnesses compare each member to their memory of the culprit

Usually present less correct identification but also less false alarms

Question 30

Decision time?

Answer 30

The faster an eyewitness is in making an identification, the more likely the identification is to be accurate.

The 10-12s rule for accurate identification

Question 31

Decision process?

Answer 31

Accurate witnesses were more likely to show automatic recognition (e.g. his face just popped out at me)

Inaccurate witnesses were more likely to adopt a process of elimination strategy (e.g. I compared the photos to each other to narrow the choices)

Question 32

Lineup identification test?

Answer 32

Predictive utility of face recognition tasks for eyewitness identification

Proclivity to choose predicted mistaken identifications on culprit-absent lineups

Face recognition skill was only weakly predictive of correct identifications in culprit-present lineups

Question 33

Good indicators of eyewitness ID accuracy?

Answer 33

Confidence
Decision time
Decision process