Eyewitness Accuracy Perception Memory Eyewitness Identification Carries a lot of weight identification o Juries assume eyewitnesses are accurate and confident in their o Research support showing juries will overestimate accuracy Problem plenty of places where eyewitness identification can go wrong Large number of false convictions have been due to eyewitness error or false confessions by the alleged suspect Memory Encoding o Not neutral when we encode things More stressed emotional worse at encoding narrow our attention experiences o Mood congruence We remember positive experiences better than we do negative we encode things better that match our current mood If I m depressed better at encoding negative things If I m happy better at encoding happy things o Mood dependence we encode it matches the mood under which we retrieve it we remember things better if the mood under which Anxious when you remember something better remember it Storage when you re anxious o We do not remember everything that happens to us o We all have time induced memory deterioration o Post event information can interfere with memory New information can get in the way with what you originally remember Includes unrelated and incorrect things o False presuppositions Retrieval someone s recollection question injects an assumptions that contradicts what actually happened asking a question in a way that messes with They show you a video with a car going through a yield sign and they ask if the car went through the stop sign most people forget that it was a yield sign and not a stop sign asking things in a way that can pull for o Memory misinformation wrongful information Example How fast was the car going when it smashed into the other car Higher speeds than when hit is used instead of smashed Memories are a reconstructive process that can be affected by our emotional state by time and by receiving information later Interviewing Children Question types o Open focused specific leading o Type of question makes a difference o Open ended questions are difficult for younger children o Focused and specific questions are easier for younger children o Leading questions pull for a particular answer and younger children are very susceptible to it o Forensic interviews with a child are all if possible focused and specific questions Susceptible vs social desirability o Always remember to tell them that I don t know is an okay response o Social desirability them to answer more likely to answer in the way they think you want o Social desirability susceptibility Fantasy Elements in Children s Memory Measure of Fantasy Element when kids reported abuse o Gold standard severe reports of abuse and knew what happened just o Severe Questionable claim was very severe but weren t 100 sure that under 16 it happened just under 4 o Non Severe Gold less severe sexual victimizations but we knew it happened it was solid usually based on perpetrator confession 2 o Non severe Questionable cases where the abuse wasn t severe and it was questionable that it happened 0 5 o Kids who had most abuse and it was known were the most likely to add fantasy elements fantasy elements are not associated with it being false but with it being true o Kids who have things happen to them that they cannot fathom could happen to them tend to have a hard time differentiating between what happened and fantasies Two Mechanisms that Play a Role for the Accuracy from an Eye Witness Estimator variables things that we have no control over but can impact 1 reliability o Witness race gender age etc Men and women do equally well Older and younger tend to struggle o Viewing time and frequency Fast things are harder to take in Overestimate the amount of time a negative event lasts Underestimate the amount of time a positive event lasts o Other race effect different race than ours more mistakes are made when identifying people of a In group out group differences energy identifying the person s race before we identify other physical characteristics we essentially waste cognitive failure to notice changes in our visual field because it o Change blindness is so sparse and we are limited to what we can take in a perpetrator o Unconscious transference identifying someone else in the crime scene as Because they look familiar At crime scene o Weapon focus attention than emotion if a weapon is present we focus on that More to do with o Stress Just a cognitive attention thing not an emotional nervous thing may impact what we attend to in a scene If you have an increased amount of stress stress focuses your attention High stress focuses you in but messes with your ability to pick up details about the surrounding scene System variables what the CJ system does 2 o Witness instructions o Lineups and Photo Spreads Lower risk of suggestibility Fillers perpetrator the people in the lineup who are not the suspected Good fillers reasonable alternatives to the suspect other people in the lineup who are 3 Principles of Lineup Size Nominal size Effective size how many people you put in the lineup number of true reasonable alternatives to the suspect in the lineup Want nominal size to equal effective size minimize possibility of error Don t want to give witness feedback Want to ask how confident they are in their identification Can t ask Which one is he have to ask Is he there Simultaneous versus sequential presentation Simultaneous Sequential shown all at once shown one at a time Sequential minimizes error Hypnosis Tried to help people remember details Susceptible to suggestion Hardy v State 1968 hypnotically refreshed memory is admissible State v Hurd 1981 hypnotically refreshed memory is admissible as long as the recall is comparable to normal recall o Hypnotist has to be experienced and trained psychologists psychiatrist o Hypnotist cannot be hired by either side of the case o Has to be audio or video recorded o Have to get all possible information before hypnosis o Only hypnotist and client can be present for hypnosis Hyperamnesia easy to mix accurate and inaccurate information o You allow imaginations to become memories get more confident about what you remember regardless if Memory hardening it s a real memory or not Taken on a case by case basis o Rare Lots of risks to tainting memory when you use hypnosis o Imaginations can be considered memories even after hypnosis Debate about whether or not it s admissible because it probably doesn t hold up to Daubert as a memory enhancement