Week 9 Eyewitness Memory

Question 1

What is a primary contributor to wrongful convictions?

Answer 1

• Eyewitness identification error is primary contributor to wrongful convictions
  
  • ~75% of convictions overturned by DNA evidence
  • Of these ~57% involved an initial low confidence identification

Question 2

What is the most persuasive form of evidence for a conviction?

Answer 2

I witness evidence

Question 3

How good are jurors and telling the difference between an accurate in an in accurate witness

Answer 3

• Accurate witness believed 80% of time
• Inaccurate witness believed 79.5% of time

Question 4

Can we tell if a memory is real or not?

Answer 4

Without an accurate record it is difficult to verify the accuracy of memories that doesn’t mean all memories or false

People may simply believe in the accuracy of their memory

Question 5

How does psychology study eyewitness memory?

Answer 5

• What is the nature of memory for the types of events that involve eyewitnesses testimony (e.g., traumatic, highly stressful, etc.)?
• What conditions are more likely to lead to inaccurate eyewitness memory?
• How can we improve how law enforcement and the court system treat eyewitness memory to improve memory accuracy?

Question 6

What factors affect the accuracy of eyewitness memory?

Answer 6

1. Post-Event Misinformation
2. Source Confusion or Source Monitoring Error
3. Nature of the event: Emotional Arousal
4. Nature of line-ups that lead to misidentification

Question 7

How my questioning eyewitnesses affect memory?

Answer 7

• Wording Effects: memories can be influenced by wording of questions
  
  • Subtle changes in in questioning can lead to false memories

Question 8

What is the miss information effect?

Answer 8

• Presentation of misleading information, such as during an interview, that occurs after memory encoding can distort memory
• Demonstrates that memory is highly suggestible and reconstructive

Question 9

How does the illusion of memory occur?

Answer 9

Miss information presented true memory retrieval becomes part of the original memory.

Question 10

What is a social aspect of misinformation?

Answer 10

“Misinformation” presented by co-witness reduced the accuracy for what the person actually saw

Question 11

What is source monitoring?

Answer 11

• Being able to tell where a memory came from (i.e., the source or origin)
  
  • Not what is remembered, but from where the information was learned

Question 12

What are some source monitoring errors?

Answer 12

• failure to identify the source of information
• people remember information, but misremember where it came from

Question 13

How does emotional arousal or stress affect memory?

Answer 13

There is an optimal level of arousal or stress that improves memory

• Performance is an inverted U-shaped function

Question 14

How is Misinformation presented in Canada?

Answer 14

• Cognitive Interview Method
• Series of techniques to improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
  
  • e.g., “Beginning an interview with open-ended questions.”
  • 50% increase in accuracy without increasing errors (Fisher, Geiselman, & Amador, 1998)

Question 15

What is the Easterbrook hypothesis?

Answer 15

• Higher levels of arousal are associated with:
  
  • Decreased memory for peripheral details
  • Better memory for central details (weapon, perpetrator’s face)
• People more likely to remember the central features of events but forget the peripheral details of events

Question 16

What is the weapon focus?

Answer 16

• Attention is drawn to a weapon, leading to better memory
• Peripheral information (perpetrator’s face) is remembered worse

Question 17

What is misidentification?

Answer 17

Identifying a stranger is more difficult than identifying someone who is familiar

• Most cases of misidentification involve strangers
  
  • People misremember that a face was seen in a mugshot and not at the crime
  • Biases in Identification (race, age, etc.)

Question 18

What is an important line of instruction?

Answer 18

Viewers need to be told that perpetrator may not be present

• “Not there” is an appropriate response (Steblay, 1997)
  
  • Accurate identification reduced 2%
  • Misidentification reduced 42%

Question 19

What are the two types of lineups?

Answer 19

Sequential versus simultaneous lineup

• Simultaneous encourages relative judgment
  
  • Bias to pick one that looks most like the perpetrator
• Sequential encourages an absolute decision
  
  • Is this the person or not?

Question 20

Which lineup leads to less in misidentification?

Answer 20

Sequential line-ups lead to less misidentification, without sacrificing accurate identification

Question 21

How should lineup fillers look?

Answer 21

• The greater the dissimilarity of a filler to a suspect, the greater the likelihood of misidentification
• Fillers should fit the verbal description
• Fillers should be similar in other ways as well if possible

Question 22

How are confidence and identification related?

Answer 22

• Confidence increases with repeated retrieval and feedback, but accuracy does not
• Initial confidence is positive correlated to accuracy
  
  • If people are initially low in confidence, then accuracy will be lower
  • If people are initially high in confidence, then accuracy will be higher

Question 23

What are the conditions for a pristine lineup?

Answer 23

• Line-ups should be sequential
• The suspect should not stand out in the lineup
• Caution that the offender might not be in the lineup
• Use double-blind testing
  
  • Avoid feedback given to the witness
• Collect a confidence statement at the time of the identification