Eyewitness Testimony Exam 1

Loftus' studies: headache, articles, verbs Misinformation effect Contributions to the field

- Dec 1974, published in psychology today article on eyewitness testimony -Detailed leading questions studies Headache products stdy · Conducted hidden camera commercials · How many other products did you try? o 1,2, 3?...if asked this way 3.3 o or 1, 5, 10? If asking this way... 5.2 o leading questions can affect answer someone gives you · do you get headaches frequently and id so how often, 2.2 times per week, do you get headacehs occasionaly, .7 times per week Definite vs indefinite article · Subjects viewed simulated car accident · Did you see the/a broken headlight? · No broken headlight · 22 people said they saw it if you said the Loftus and Palmer 1974 · Abiut how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? 34 mph · About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other? 40.5 mph The way you word questions affects how people will answer. - A week later: did you see the broken glass? There was no glass, if they said hit 14% yes, smashed 32%. Leading question had both inital and long range effect - Demo study: supplanted a yield sign with a stop sign Misinformation effect - Witness an event—filler task—given misinformation o Article added new dimension to prof life, offered to work on a court case for free to gain experience then o Within days, calls from lawyers for help came into loftus Consulted on high profile cases - Ted bundy, meenendez brothers, oliver north, Rodney king, oj simpson, Martha stewert, Michael Jackson, scooter libby o Judges strictly followed admissibility guidelines o Like buckhout loftus excluded as expert witness in some jurisdictions o 1983 Az supreme court first to reverse verdict because trial court refused loftus' expert testimony o 1984, CA followed changed eyewitness testimony research o conducted scientific experiments instead of demos o isolated impt factors eg weapon o research could be replicated by ohtes helped with others to spark interest in psych science of eyewitness terstimony and shed light of problem of false accusations

Hypnosis

1. When working, hypnosis is not using an obscure power, but promoting relaxation, more cooperation, and increase of concentration. Bring the subject in a mindset that can produce better recall. 2. Using hypnosis in solving criminal cases may lead to bizarre results. Where valuable information can be gathered when the subject is not entirely hypnotized and it does not always work. 3. Concerning, people can (unintentionally) lie under hypnosis and the examiner would be unable to detect those lies. One reason could because of the willingness to please the questioner. Subjects made more errors under hypnosis, partiality pertaining to leading questions. *Hypnosis can lead to increases in suggestibility*

Frenda et al 2011 Current Issues and Advances in Misinformation Research misinformation effect Who is vulnerable? Resisting misinformation Susceptibility to misinfo

3 accounts of why eyewitnesses can misreport: normative social influence, informational social influences process (thinking another version is more accurate than own memory), and misinformation effect Distorting effects of misleading post event information on memory for words, faces, and details of witnessed events. Remembering new information given to them after words (thief hid wallet in pants not jackets with what they originally saw) Nobody is immune to distorting effects of misinformation. Very young children and elderly are more susceptible to misinformation, also subjects who report lapses in memory and attention this could be due to lack of cognitive resources that increase reliance on external cues Those who had higher intelligence scores, greater perceptual abilities, greater working memory capacities, and greater performance on face recognition tasks tended to resist missing and produce fewer false memories Subjects with lesser cognitive ability, low fear of negative evaluation and harm avoidance and high in cooperativeness, reward dependance, and self directedness were associated with increased vulnerability to misinfo

What would be potentially the best method police could use to interrogate a witness? ➢ Snee and Lush (1941)

A Narrative➝Interrogatory order, you would let the witness tell the event(s) in their own words and then ask specific questions. <Accuracy then Completeness> Snee and Lush (1941 Subjects (from a women's college) watched a colored motion picture detail an event that involved an exchange of money between a man and woman which then was followed by an assault, theft, and, lastly, escape. One group was given an Interrogatory➝Narrative order. The other group was given a narrative then interrogatory order. Implications: By having Interrogatory reporting first, the information in the questions can potentially be included in the free-response

Retaining Information in Memory: Chapter 4 Passage of time enhancing, compromising, introducing new info, central vs peripheral, timing

A witnesses testimony can be affected by events that take place during the retention interval, and the interval length We forget very rapidly immediately after an event, but more gradually as time goes on Passage of time ○ Exposure to new information postevent can dramatically enhance and/or change our memory of the original event ○ Enhancing Memory: by simply mentioning an existing object it is possible to increase the likelihood that it will be recalled later on ○ Compromise Memories: many witnesses will compromise between what they've seen and what they have been told later on when presented with new information that conflicts with the memory (8 perpetrators told either 4 or 12, compromised between what they saw and what they heard 6 or 8.9?) ○ Introducing Nonexistent Objects: When subjects are later on presented with misleading information, they tend to change their memory to incorporate the misleading object ■ People can come to believe things that never really happened ○ Central vs. Peripheral Details: salient or central items were recalled with significantly greater accuracy and were much more difficult to alter with misleading information than peripheral ones ○ Timing of Postevent Information: longer retention intervals leads to worse memory performance ○ Consistent information improves performance and misleading information hinders it

How does memory work? · Acquisition Event: characteristics of the event

Acquisition o Perception of the event o Variables affecting acquisition: event and witness factors Event: characteristics of the event: exposure time, frequecny, detail salience, type of fact, duration of event, violence of event · Exposure time: the longer you are able to look the better you remember. Lughtery et al 1971, indicidual faces shown for 10 or 32 seconds, memory test, people more likely to be accurate at 32 sec (58%) than 10 sec (47%). Longer exposure time means more accurate Frequency: how many time syouve seen ekemetn to remember. More repetition = better memory Detail salience: subjects more accurate and complete for highly salient details. Central vs peripheral. Marshall er al 1971 movie 2 minute delay then interview. Problem: difficult to define. What is central vs peripheral? What is salient? Quantitative measure of that show people na event and ask people to list details they remember, ones that are listed the most or first get considered salient others considered less salient

Brief history

Alfred Binet ■ Argued for the creation of the science of testimony ■ First to report suggestive questioning influenced responses Hugo Münsterberg ■ Recruited by William James to Harvard ■ Suggested certainty does not necessarily mean accuracy and jurors may understand forgetting, but are not likely to realize a witness can remember wrong information John Henry Wigamore ■ Argued that psychology was not yet equipped to handle the issues of evaluating the credibility of eyewitnesses Elizabeth Loftus ■ Started work in eyewitness psychology with experiments manipulating post-event information that produced eyewitness error Robert Buckhout ■ Focused on memory for people and misidentification in lineups ■ Ran experiment on a New York City television channel which showed a mugging then subsequent lineup. Viewers called in to pick who committed the crime. 2,000/2,145 mistakenly identified 1970s/1980s ■ Defense lawyers saw the value in expert testimony as a mechanism to convince juries that eyewitness memory is not always accurate ■ Prosecutors generally argue against expert testimony because the science is not established enough yet, the jury must decide the credibility of the witnesses on their own, this knowledge is common sense, and the prejudicial value of expert testimony outweighs its probative value ■ Expert testimony has been permitted and denied in almost every state in the US

Are ET errors exceptional? Father Pagano Case Edwin Borchard (1932) convicting the innocent Brandon and Davie Huff Wrongful Convictin Rattner Sacco and Vanzetti Sawyer Brothers

Are these errors exceptional? · News archival research · Police records (e.g. ask to look at all lineups done in the last few years, and how many times did people pick the suspect/filler/no one?) · Scientific experiments (lab based) · Not very rare, how do we know how rare they are? Difficult to exactly quantify Father Pagano Case · Accused of committing armed robberies · 6-7 eyewitnesses identified the wrong person · highly suggestive questioning interviewed by police · cross contamination with the witnesses from a common officer who thought it was father pagano · Ronald clouser came forward and confessed and knew details only the robber would know Edwin Borchard (1932) convicting the innocent · 65 cases of wrongful convitions in us and England major cause ID Brandon and Davie · descrie 70 cases of wrongful conviction Huff Wrongful Convictin · searched 1100 magazines and journals · found 500 cases of erroneous convictions · eyewitness error involved in nearly 60% Rattner · 205 wrongfully convicted defendeants · 52% due to inaccurate eyewitness IDs Sacco and Vanzetti · 1921, robbery and murder case · 9 eyewitness in total · many did not see faces of the robbers but still testified against them · these two even had alibis but still convicted and put to death Sawyer Brothers · store manager kidnapped 1 witness 8 alibis · but eyewitness ID still won out over the alibi and they were convicted

Studies testing types of interviewing: Cady (1924) Marquis et al (1972) Lipton (1977)

Cady (1924) ○ Students were asked to fill out a test, asking about the events after the arrival of a representative of the government entered the room. One-half of the subjects were given a test that prompted that asked for a Narrative/Free Reporting. The other half were given a test that prompted a Controlled Narrative, asking to answer a series of questions. ■ Results: More errors when forced to answer questions compared to the free-response (Accuracy: Narrative/Free Reporting > Controlled Narrative) Marquis and colleagues (1972) ○ Participants (N = 151, all males) watched a filmed event and then given a questionnaire ■ Narrative/Free Report: More accurate, but incomplete ■ Controlled Narrative: Less accurate, but more complete ■ Interrogatory Report: Less accurate than Narrative but more complete Lipton study (1977) ○ Participants (N = 150) watched a sudden shot and robbery video ■ Narrative/Free Report: 91% accurate, 21% detail recalled ■ Interrogatory Report: 56% accurate, 75% detail recalled

Cross-race identification impairment/own-race bias Stress Weapon focus

Cross-race identification impairment/own-race bias: - The chance of a mistaken identification is 1.56 times greater in other-race than same-race conditions Stress - Deffenbacher et. al (2004) meta-analysis: 27 tests of the effects of heightened stress on identification accuracy and 36 tests of its effect on recall of crime-related details - High levels of stress negatively affected both types of memory - Effect of stress notably larger for target-present than for target-absent lineups - Stress particularly reduced correct identification rates - Morgan et al. (2004) examined eyewitness capabilities of more than 500 active-duty military personnel enrolled in a survival-school program → mock prisoner of war camp - Memory accuracy for the high-stress interrogator was much lower overall than for the low-stress interrogator. Weapon focus - The visual attention eyewitnesses give to a perpetrator's weapon during the course of a crime - Larger in target-absent lineups and when memory was generally impaired - Research by Mitchell, Livosky, and Mather (1998); Pickel (1998, 1999); and Shaw and Skolnick (1999) indicates that any surprising object can draw attention away from the perpetrator and that novelty, rather than threat, may be the critical ingredient in the effect.

Lynn (2009) "Hypnosis and Memory" in: Encyclopedia of Forensic Science (EFS) General what about and types of admissibility Overall implications

Currently there is a conflicting debate on the allowance of forensic hypnosis in recovering memories as evidence in the courts. This article looks at the status of forensic hypnosis and evidence which lead to conflicting legal decisions among the states. Per se Inadmissible (27 States): Per se Admissible (4 States): Case-by-case (13 States): Overall: While the states, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH) follow their own set of guidelines and procedures. Currently, there is no effective applied guideline when using hypnosis to evaluate its value and any potential biasing effect. Critics claim that there are no possible procedural measures that can overcome the inherent bias effect of hypnosis.

DNA exonerations: innocence project, leading cause, what if there isn't DNA?

DNA exonerations · innocent project: barry sheck and jerry newfield in new york founded the innocence project · as of 1/7/20: 367 DNA exonerations Leading cause? o Mistaken ID, 70% of cases o Number of years in prison? - Avg 14 yrs served -Combined total over 4000 years - Many were on death row True perpetrator found? - Perp not found in 58% of cases - More than 70 violent crimes could have been prevented Compensation? - 40% never compensated at all What if no DNA? o Armed robberies, drive by shootings, drug cases, o 90% of cases do not involve biological evidence What if there was DNA but now its lost? o Police are not legally required to store evidence in old convictions

DNA testing Common research methods

DNA testing highlights eyewitness misidentification ○ Error in eyewitness identification was the main cause of convicting innocent people ○ As of when this article was written, 180 DNA exonerations were made and 75% or more were because of eyewitness misidentification Common methods used in eyewitness research ○ Lab based experiments are most common ■ Major strength is that they can account for cause and effect relations ■ Especially important for research on system variables, but not well suited for estimator variables for a lack of generalizability ○ Archival/field research ■ Good for establishing external validity, but issue of multicollinearity makes it difficult to establish which variables are responsible for which outcomes

Devlin Report Identifying subjects in police records Duke lacrosse rape case:

Devlin Report · Mistaken IDs in England too · Committee examined 2116 lineups from 1973 o Suspect picked 45% of time o 55% don't know or picked foil (known innocent) o how often are foils picked? - Studies suggest 20-24% of time (at least) · How much impact does ET have? o In 347 case, ET only evidence o Of these cases, 74% conviction rate Identifying subjects in police records · Three studies that looked at police record in Britain 9 person arrays o Slater o Wright and mcdaid o Valentine et al o Average: 2988 witnesses 1213 arrays, suspect ID 38%, Foil ID 21%, No ID 41% o Suspects are a mix of guilty and innocent it is unclear so we say at least for these error rates o When people make a choice they are wrong over a 1/3 of the time. Over 1/3 of IDs are clearly bad guesses of foils 21%/59% o Some suspect IDs must be guesses 21%/9 2.5% if fair · Sacremento 6 person lineups o 50% suspect ID 24% foil ID 26% No ID · Some police receptive to this idea because they see the mistake happen with the choosing of foils. Duke lacrosse rape case: 3 students wrongly implicated in a rape bc of really bad ID procedure

Eyewitness Testimony: devlin report, jurors influenced, lab experiments, Other factors that increase eyewitness' credibility include

Devlin Report (1976) ● Committee in England examined all lineups that occured in Britain and Wales in 1973 ● Results indicated that of the cases where the only evidence against the suspect was identification by eyewitnesses, 74% of these cases resulted in conviction ■ Even when there is an abundance of evidence supporting innocence, jurors are still influenced by eyewitness identification such as with the conviction of Harry Cashin (was later overturned) (Wall, 1965) Laboratory experiments Loftus (1974) ● In a mock case in which a store owner is robbed and murdered, the number of subject-jurors who found the defendant guilty dramatically increased when presented with the eyewitness testimony of a store clerk ○ No eyewitness testimony: 18% found defendant guilty ○ With eyewitness testimony: 72% found defendant guilty ● Juror opinions hardly changed when presented with information that the clerk had terrible vision ○ With discredited eyewitness testimony: 68% found defendant guilty Tversky and Kanheman (1977) ● Participants were presented with information of two cab companies where the Green cab company owns 85% of cabs and the Blue cab company owns 15% of cabs, and a witness reported that the cab involved in a hit-and-run accident was blue. The court tested her ability to identify the cab colors correctly and her accuracy was 80% ● Various versions of this problem was used, but a majority of participants answered the likelihood that the cab was blue was 80% Lavrakas and Bickman (1975) ● Results suggested that prosecutors believed having a witness who could accurately recall the events of a crime was crucial during the stages of prosecution (felony review, preliminary hearing, plea bargaining, and trial) and just resolution of the case Other factors that increase eyewitness' credibility include: ● Likeability ● "Powerful" as opposed to "powerless" speech ● Confidence

General discussion and implications

Effects of post identification feedback on eyewitness confidence in four key ways: 1. Using unbiased witness instructions → clear post identification feedback effect with target-absent lineups. 2. Distinguished between inflation effects for the two target-absent identification response categories: mistaken identifications and correct rejections. 3. Detected confidence inflation in a target-present lineup condition 4. Confidence inflation effect may vary depending on the specific confidence assessment that witnesses are asked to make Implications: - Found confidence inflation for: - stimulus materials and lineups that produced markedly different identification response patterns to those reported in previous studies - with unbiased witness instructions - using both target-absent and target-present lineups - all identification response categories. - The most important finding: inflation occurred for the two identification responses of most obvious forensic relevance. - Found that the reference point for confidence assessments may well shape the magnitude of the inflation effect. - Type of confidence question → influence confidence inflation - Two potentially negative outcomes - Witnesses who selected an innocent filler = less confidence on choosing the offender - Witnesses who rejected the lineup = less confidence about selections Ultimately, there needs to be more research that is monitored closely

Wells et al. estimator variables system variables

Estimator: Cross-race identification impairment/own-race bias, stress, weapon focus, exposure duration, disguise, retention interval, witness intoxication System: interviewing, social influence, cognitive interview,

Failure in the acquisition stage Event Factors Witness Factors

Event: exposure time, frequency, detail salience, type of fact, violence Witness: stress, expectations, perceptual activity

Experiment 2

Examined whether the expected post identification feedback effect was detected with target-present lineups and unbiased instructions. Pooled positive identification response data from Experiments 1 and 2 to establish whether confirming feedback resulted in a confidence-accuracy relationship characterized by overconfidence. Method - Similar procedures to Experiment 1, except a target present lineup was used Results - More marked confidence inflation for current than for retrospective confidence.

Exposure duration Disguise

Exposure duration - The amount of time available for viewing a perpetrator is positively associated with the witness's ability to subsequently identify him or her - Memon, Hope, and Bull (2003) study: realistic videotaped crime with the perpetrator visible for 12 versus 45 seconds; proportion of correct identification in target-present arrays and correct rejections in target-absent arrays increased with exposure time (from 32% to 90% for correct identifications and from 15% to 59% for correct rejections), although mistaken identifications in target-absent arrays remained high even with longer exposure (85% at 12 seconds and 41% at 45 seconds). Disguise - Disguises diminish facial-feature cues necessary for recognition - Cutler et al. (1987b) had participants view a videotaped liquor store robbery (in half, robber wore a knit pullover cap covering his hair and hairline; in other half robber did not wear a hat) and later attempt an identification from a videotaped lineup. - Robber less accurately identified when disguised: 45% of participants identified robber in the lineup test if he wore no hat; 27% identified him if he wore a hat during the robbery. - Not all disguises or changes in appearance work: Yarmey (2004) found similar levels of identification accuracy when viewing a young woman for 15 seconds, both with and without a baseball cap and dark sunglasses.

Failure in the acquisition stage: event factors Exposure time frequency detail salience type of fact violence

Exposure time ● Subjects who viewed four slides of human faces, one at a time, for 2½ sec. each had a harder time than those who viewed the faces for 8 sec. each in recalling if they had seen the faces previously after an 8 minute gap (Laughery et al., 1971) ○ The 3 most popular features that the subjects used to help in remembering and identifying the faces were general structure, eyes, and nose Frequency ● Number of opportunities an individual has to perceive particular details that are to be remembered later ○ Ebbinghaus (1885/1964) ■ One's ability to to relearn previously seen material was improved by repeated prior study of material ○ Burtt (1948) ■ Something experiences many times is going to be remembered better than something experienced once Detail salience ● Not all details within an incident are equally memorable to the viewer; some things catch our attention more than others ● A study that had 151 male participants watched a video and were then interviewed about what they saw in the film. When people were asked what they saw in the movie, certain details stuck out and were mentioned more than others. In addition, the accuracy for remembering what happened surrounding those salient details was greater than for less memorable ones. (Marshall et al., 1971) Type of fact ● Not all facts are remembered equally ● A study looking at the average accuracy in estimating weight, distance, and time found that people generally tend to overestimate the amount of time that something takes. (Cattell 1895) ○ People have enormous difficulty estimating the duration of an event ● When a person is feeling stress or anxiety, the tendency to overestimate the passage of time in increased Violence ● A study showed participants either a violent or nonviolent video and then asked them later to recall what happened. For both genders, recollection was worse for those that saw the violent event-- possibly due to the greater stress produced by the event ○ Testimony about an emotionally loaded incident should be treated with greater caution

Fate of original memory Nature of misinformation memories Source misattribution effect

Fate of original memory -Controversial and debated, some say not encoded in the first place others say doesn't affect original memory, mis info just interferes with what they recall. -So Loftus says multiple reasons and we don't know yet. This occurs because they have no original memory (it was never stored or it has faded). Sometimes this occurs because of deliberation. And sometimes it appears as if the original event memories have been impaired in the process of contemplating misinformation. Moreover, the idea that you can plant an item into someone's memory (apart from whether you have impaired any previous traces) was downright interesting in its own right. Nature of misinformation memories -The verbal descriptions of the "unreal" memories were longer, contained more verbal hedges (I think I saw . . .), more references to cognitive operations (After seeing the sign the answer I gave was more of an immediate impression . . .), and fewer sensory details. -Thus statistically a group of real memories might be different from a group of unreal ones. -Of course, many of the unreal memory descriptions contained verbal hedges and sensory detail, making it extremely difficult to take a single memory report and reliably classify it as real or unreal. Source misattribution effect: -The investigators concluded that mis- led subjects definitely do sometimes come to remember seeing things that were merely suggested to them. -The size of the effect can vary, and emphasized that source misattributions are not inevitable after exposure to suggestive misinformation.

Hugo Munsterberg: history, career, research speciality, experiment, claims

Father of applied psych o Born in Germany in 1863 o Earned PhD in 1885 o Met wiliam james "father of psych" at conference in paris and recruited Hugo to Harvard o Former chair of harvard's psych department Began applying psych to law in 1906 o Started by working case Richard Ivens murder case in Chicago o Thought confession was false and person was actually innocent o No one believe him and ivens was hanged o Lectured at universities on subject o Published on the witness stand: o Became public figure (equivalent of being on cnn oprah time etc) In otws, recalls his own experience testifying as a victim to a burglary o Outlines memory errors he made during trial Used experimental psych studies to support arguments o Staged crime in university of berlin classroom - Gunfire in front of classroom - Students wrote accounts of event - Several errors, esp for gunfire portion of event - Errors included misstating events and inventing actions that didn't happen Arguments in ontws - Eyewitnesses make mistakes - Legal system cant tell mistakes from true account - Witness confidence does not mean accurate - Errors in memory are natural not pathological - Also argued against the legal system, law has a problem, psychology has a solution, law ignored it

Yoille and cutshall 1986, goal, scoring procedure, results, conclusions

Goal: to study real eyewitness memory for real crime and to examine effects of stress and misinformation The facts of the crime: - Thief steals funs and money - Ties up owner, owner breaks free - Owner runs outside to get liscence - Thief shoots owner twice - Owner fires back 6 shots at thief, thief killed o Bc thief is killed, no trial, and yuille and cutshall could have fair amount of access to true witness o Good case: lots of witness, forensic evidence. Case close thief killed, lots of details for memory test o 21 witnesses interviewed by the police, 4 to 5 months passed, 13 witnesses interviewed by researchers, the misinformation (the vs a: did you see the blue door a blue door) and stress questions scoring procedure: - reconstructed crime scene from original police reports and witness statements - action people object details - scored accuracy by comparing witnesses interview statements to reconstruction results - witnesses were remarkably accurate 80% correct overall - no misinformation effects - stress enhanced memory. Highly stressed = 88% accurate. Limitation: the people who were highly stressed had more direct involvement, and they were right there so had better views than the other people who were not directly involved or farther away. Misinformation was strange (if everyone is saying no you cant see a difference, no variation in the outcome). Confounding: stressed witnesses most involved better viewing conditions (some witnesses looking out two story window or driving by in car) Conclusions: - eyewitnesses are quite accurate - scoring procedure inflated level of accuract

Question wording

Harris (1973) ○ "How tall was the basketball player?" versus "How short was the basketball player?" ■ The latter question presumes that the player was already short, influencing estimated answers. ○ "How long was the movie?" versus "How short was the movie?" ■ Long: avg est. 130 mins <normal movie length> ■ Short: avg est. 100 mins Loftus <Headache Study> ○ "Other tried products'', one group was given 1/2/3 as answer options and the other was given 1/5/10 as answer options ■ 1/2/3 answer options ➝ avg. self-reported 3.3 other tried products ■ 1/5/10 answer options ➝ avg. self-reported 5.2 other tired products ○ <Headache self-report> "Frequently" versus "Occasionally" ■ "Frequently" ➝ avg. self-reported 2.2/wk "Occasionally" ➝ avg. self-reported 0.7/wk Loftus and Zanni (1975) < "the" versus "a" > ○ Students (N = 100) watched a short film of a multi-car accident resulting in a five-car bumper-to-bumper collision. Loftus and Palmer (1974) ○ Focus to see if wording would affect quantitative judgment. Changed wording in describing a car incident. ■ "smashed" ➝ avg. est. reported 40.8 mph Highest ■ "collided" ➝ avg. est. reported 39.3 mph ■ "bumped" ➝ avg. est. reported 38.1 mph ■ "hit" ➝ avg. est. reported 34.0 mph "contacted" ➝ avg. est. reported 30.8 mph Lowest

History of Eyewitness Memory Research

History of Eyewitness Memory Research · UCI is home of national registry of exonerations (through DNA and many through other means) · Wrongful convictions receive great deal of media attention · Psychologists not surprised by these cases · 100 years of research · James Doyle: true witness, tells history of eyewitness memory research Order: · Hugo Munsterberg, John Henry Wigmore, Robert Buckhout, Elizabeth Loftus, Gary Wells

How does violence interfere with memory? Loftus and Burns 1982 · Christianson and Loftus 1987 Ecological validity Violent events associated with

How does violence interfere with memory? · Before or after violence? · Central or peripheral details? Loftus and Burns 1982: goal to demonstrate retrograde amnesia in a lab with mentally shocking and realistic material o Experiment 1 methods: bank gets robbed, bad guy runs outside, ending either little boy with 17 on his shirt gets shot in face in parking lot or its back in the bank with non-violent ending. Short retention interval then their memory recall is tested. What was number on shirt? Non-violent 28% remembered, violent 4% remembered. THERE is retrograde amnesia in recall task, reduced ability to remember what happened before. Also asked two minutes of other things asked about in the paper, for most of those items performance was worse when people saw the violent ending, but not as big a difference in the one right before violence 14/16 items reduced performance Experiment 2: same as before but added third condition of a non-violent police outside interaction. 10 minute filler. Then recognition memory test. Still only violent retrograde amnesia in recognition task. Experiment 3: Maybe surprising event cause retrograde amnesia ? third condition switched to randon non violent beach scene. Still only violent retrograde amnesia in recognition task. Christianson and Loftus 1987 o Goal to study how witnessing a traumatic event affects memory for central and peripheral details o Experiment 1: neurtral going to school or truamtic slides injured on way to school. 20 min or 2 week then memory test o Compared to neutral subjects, trauma subjects: better recall for central features, poorer recognition for peripheral features o After 6 months generally gist or scene remembered better but not peripheral details o Limitations: whats central vs peripheral? Visually, storyline? Did slides evoke similar reactions to real violence/stress? Ecological validity: extent to which laboratory is speaking to the real world. Generalizable. Many people complain about lab studies, cant eccasriy apply bc far removed Violent events associated with o Retrograde amnesia o Central details enhanced o Peripheral details impaired

Components of modified cognitive interview Results

In shortening the ECI, they wanted to preserve most important aspects (mental reinstatement of context and report everything) and then remove the two mnemonic techniques were identified as the least helpful by law enforcement and support has been garnered in scientific literature for their potential elimination: Change Order and Change Perspective. ➢ Change Order: it has been argued that changing the temporal order of events conflicts with the context reinstatement mnemonic. ➢ Change Perspectives: reported as the only mnemonic that didn't significantly increase recall above initial retrieval attempts. ➢ The MCI removed the change order and change perspective mnemonics and replaced them with two motivated recall attempts to keep the scoring potential of the MCI and ECI on equal grounds. Results: ➢ Researchers controlled for interviewer behavior and level of rapport and found no significant changes. ➢ Correct Items: no significant difference between the MCI and ECI. ➢ Incorrect Items: no significant difference between any of the conditions. ➢ Confabulated Items: number was generally low, no significant difference across conditions. ➢ Accuracy: no significant difference in accuracy rate across conditions. ➢ The MCI (in its intended form) was measured against a shortened SI (minus recall and interview time for the last two recall attempts) for comparison. ■ The MCI resulted in 87% as much correct info as the long form ECI while only taking 77% of the time to conduct it. ■ The MCI resulted in more correct info than the shortened SI.

Confidence in One's Recollection Knew-it-all-along Effect

Is confidence in recollection necessary more accurate than a person who isn't? There are studies that indicate there is a positive relationship between confidence and accuracy. However, there are other studies that indicate no relationship or a negative relationship. Knew-it-all-along Effect Fischhoff (1975, 1977): ○ Subjects were given passages about an event and then presented four possible outcomes. The control group only gave probabilities of each outcome (sum 100%). Two other groups were given different 'correct' outcome (i.e., British victory, Gurkha victory) before giving their probability as if not knowing. ■ Implications: a person may believe they knew the information if previously told as if it was fact, directly or subtly *Hindsight ≠ Foresight*

· John Henry Wigmore: history and claims · Wigmore v Munsterberg · Outcome

John Henry Wigmore o Former dean of northwesterm law o Born 1863 san fran o Earned jd at Harvard o Early champion of public defenders o Created countrys frist forensic crime lab o Argued compensation for wrongfully convicted o Reprinted musterbergs writing in th eillinois law review In 1909, wrote a commentary in response to Munsterberg - Commentary in form of trial, cross examining Munsterberg, distorted benefits of psych and downfalls of law Two main goals of ws commentary - Musterberg was overstating things - Vut also called on lawyers to learn lessons from psychology Wigmore v Munsterberg o Wigmore firend to psych his commentary sparked controversy o M argued psych had a solution to fix legal system o W argued psych studies were too new and could not fix legal system o In ws defense psych studies show eyewitness in general make mistakes but couldn't prove particular witness was correct in a given case o Reliability of witnesses not the same as reliability of verdicts Outcome o Musterberg goes back to lab publishes in other areas and dies o 20 years after ms death wigmore claimed when the psych are ready for the courts the courts will be ready for psych

Impact of ET: · Loftus 1974, Hatvany and Strack, Perceived attributes of credible eyewitness Witness for the Defense

Loftus 1974 o Mock juror studies o 150 subjects read hypothetical about Mr. X's robbery and murder o 3 conditions - circumstantial evidence (i.e. found with the same ammonia on his shoes that was used in the store to clean up, similar amount of money he had matched what was taken, but he had answers for why he had those things) - circum and eyewitness - circum and discredited eyewitness (eyewitness had super poor vision no way he could have seen it from the back room) o circum only 18% convicted o cricum and eyewitness 72% convicted o circum and discredited eyewitness 68% still convicted Hatvany and Strack o Try to critique loftus's case and say their study is better than hers o Subjects view video of dog bite case o No eyewitness evidence—60% o Eyewitness—80% o Discredited eyewitness but eyewitness says im sorry I never shoudve testified—30% o Kind of a boomerang effect with a bad testimony Perceived attributes of credible eyewitness o Research shows witnesses are viewed as credible when: - They are likable - They speak in powerful language - They are confident · Believed 80% of the time, whether witness is correct or incorrect Witness for the Defense · Intro to EL experiences ·Memory is not like tivo it is reconstructive in nature. When you try to remember what happen its constructive take info from bits and pieces to create what looks like a memory · Memory errors are natural o Piaget: Developmental psych who talks about false memory he had of attempted kidnapping of hi as child with his nurse o Penny example

Eyewitness Testimony Perceiving Events: Chapter 3 ● Memory Process

Memory Process Acquisition ■ Perception of the original event in which information is encoded into the memory system ● When we perceive an event we do not record that event into our memories like a video recorder ■ The observer must decide which aspects of the visual stimulus she should attend to ● Proportion of information actually perceives is small Retention ■ Period of time that passes between the event and the eventual recollection of said event ■ One information is encoded, some of it may remain unchanged, and some may not ● Engaging in or overhearing conversations about the event, reading a newspaper story, etc., can all bring about powerful and unexpected changes Retrieval ■ Recalling of stored information ● What happened during the acquisition and retention stages are crucial to what happens during retrieval ■ Retrieval Failure- events at any one of these stages can be the cause ● Information may not have perceived at all ● Information may have been accurately perceived, but forgotten or interfered with ● Information may have been accurately perceived but became inaccessible during questioning

Conclusion

Misinformation can cause people to falsely believe that they saw details that were only suggested to them. Misinformation can even lead people to have very rich false memories. Once em- braced, people can express these false memories with confidence and detail. There is a growing body of work using neuroimaging techniques to assist in locating parts of the brain (hippocampus and some related cortical structures) that might be associated with true and false memories, and these reveal the similarities and differences in the neural signatures When witnesses to an event talk with one another, when they are interrogated with leading questions or suggestive techniques, when they see media coverage about an event, misinformation can enter consciousness and can cause contamination of memory. As we retrieve and reconstruct memories, distortions can creep in without explicit external influence, and these can become pieces of misinformation. This might be a result of inference-based processes, or some automatic process, and can per- haps help us understand the distortions we see in the absence of explicit misinformation One observation is that the "updating" seen in the misinformation studies is the same kind of "updating" that allows for correction of incorrect memories.

Leading cause of wrongful conviction Abbreviated History Ronald Cotton Case Facts that influenced jennifers memory

Mistaken ID is leading cause of WC over 70% History: · Munsterberg: Apply psych to law; Wigamore thought musterberg was overenthusiastic, had respect for psych, but not to the extent Munsterberg was · Buckhout: equal rights; expert testimony; garbage bag study · Loftus: concern for falsely accused; leading questions; misinformation eggect · Wells: prevent mistaken IDs. System variables, advocated for sequential lineups, but new research we don't know if sequential is really an improvement Ronald Cotton Case · Jennifer Thompson accused Ronald cotton even though bobby poole was the actual rapist, poole didn't even look right to her anymore, he wasn't in her memory · Police officers had good intentions · Jennifer was a confident eyewitness · Genuine mistake Factors that influence jennifers memory o Photo biased lineup: see a photo lineup first where the only suspect repeated in this lineup is the only one in the lve lineup as well. Increased risk to identification in live lineup because they're familiar with the photo o Post identification feedback: receiving positive feedback that they picked the right choice, raises their confidence which is very convincing to a jury o Cross racial identification: research has shown people make more mistakes when they try to identify a stranger of a different race compared to their own race Jennifer and Ronald became friends who later wrote a book for advocacy for reform

Types of Retrieval

Narrative/Free Reporting -Open-ended questions Example: "tell us what you remember?" Interrogatory Report Form -Multiple-choice questions Example: "Did your attacker have boots or shoes?" Controlled Narrative -Specific questions promoting short answers Example: "give us a description of what the assailant held" Photo Lineup -Set of photographs given to victim/witness to identify the possible assailant

Rattner, A. (1988) Convicted but innocent: Operational definition of wrongful conviction The purpose of the study is to Previous literature Method

Operational definition of wrongful conviction: cases in which a person was convicted of a felony, but later was exonerated (generally due to new evidence or confession from actual culprit) The purpose of the study is to ○ Understand how the system allows false positives to occur ○ Understand what leads to wrongful convictions ○ Create a more sophisticated framework for understanding wrongful convictions ○ Make policy recommendations to reduce these errors Previous literature: Major sources of error identified ■ Eyewitness misidentification ■ Police and prosecutorial overzealousness ■ Community pressure for conviction ■ False accusation ■ Plea bargaining ● Method ○ Data included old and recent legal cases from books, documents, newspaper clippings, and bibliographic databases. The main criteria were: ● Did the case occur after 1900? ● Did the case culminate in a conviction? ● Was innocence established after exoneration? ○ Cases were excluded if they did not provide the type of error that occurred in the wrongful conviction ○ The final sample included 205 cases

Per se Inadmissible (27 States): Per se Admissible (4 States): Case-by-case (13 States):

Per se Inadmissible (27 States): -Viewpoint: Hypnosis is not accepted as evidence in the courts. There is a belief that it manipulate and fabricate evidence. -Supporting Research: Studies have shown memory to be malleable and imperfect. Also, studies have shown that there tend to be more error, false memories, and suggestibility associated with hypnotic methods. ➢ Spanos and colleagues (1989) ○ Subjects watched a tape of a crime, two groups were interrogated (hypnotic versus non-hypnotic) with leading questions and guided imagery. They were then subjective to a cross-examination. ■ Results: both groups were equally likely to "breakdown"/recant their testimony during cross-examination. <lack of confidence and production of false memories> Per se Admissible (4 States): -Viewpoint: Made decision based on using evidentiary rules concerning witness competence and relevance. There is an importance on having to attack the credibility of the method used to gain said witness testimony. There should be enough evidence to create reasonable doubt. Case-by-case (13 States): -Viewpoint: Believe that testimonies through hypnosis could be reliable in the right circumstances, without leading questions and procedures followed, and could be equally biased as a regular interrogation. -Supporting Research: Hypnosis increases recall volume and not all are inaccurate. Also, many other procedures (i.e., leading questions) are equally or more likely to create false memories. Many false memory studies are conducted in a controlled laboratory setting. -Counter claims (per se inadmissibility): many procedures are subjective, does not make hypnosis admissible. Studies have shown that hypnosis can increase recall confidence in inaccurate memories. There are not enough studies that support the belief that hypnosis enhances memory of arousing events (e.g., violent crimes and sexual encounters)

Post event info and how it supports theories Techniques for digging

Post event info: -Is memory structure altered by information someone is subsequently exposed to? -Environmental input, acquisition: interpretation at time of event based on existing knowledge and inference and fragments stored in memory, retention: interpretation at time of post event info and fragments stored at time of post event info, retrieval: reconstruction of interpretation, response -In theory, does this mean both memories exist or do the second set of fragments alter the first? -Coexistence argues that both memories are stored like a tape recorder, you just need to dig deep enough to find original memory. Proponent of this was Penfield with his brain stimulation studies, but spontaneous recovery only happened 3.5% of the time. -It is not possible to design an experiment to prove that alteration can occur. For example, set an experiment, if someone recalled the original memory, coexistence is proved, but if they did not recall original memory one can say you did not use the right technique to retrieve it. i.e. the lost coin problem Techniques for digging: incentives, second guessing, blatantly false information, response speed, did they notice it in the first place

Intro: Wells, G.L., Memon, A., & Penrod, S.D. (2006): problems with ET, Two types of variables in ET research

Problems with eyewitness evidence ○ Assuming inter-witness agreement of identification means more it is more accurate ○ An abundant amount of exonerating evidence is needed to surpass eyewitness identification ○ Not only can an innocent person be convicted, but the guilty party remains free to commit more crimes The legal system has very few opinions on eyewitness testimony that have been grounded in science, however, psychology has extensive background with research on eyewitnesses, how memory works, and theory The collaboration with psychology and the legal system will bolster DNA evidence with best practices in collecting evidence with interviews, lineups, etc. Two types of variables in eyewitness research that affect the accuracy of reports ○ System variables ■ Variables that are under the control of the justice system ■ E.g. how witnesses are interviewed by the police, lineup procedures, etc. ○ Estimator variables ■ Variables that are not under the control of the justice system ■ E.g. cross race identifications, stress experienced during the event, etc.

Chapter 6 Theories of eyewitness memory Two proposals of how memory is stored Other views Steps involved in comprehension and subsequent retrieval

Propositional: memory is stored in a series of ideas (i.e. The car was red, car was a datsun, the car was by a sign, sign was a stop sign) Nonpropositional: types of memory representations depend on the modality it was perceived in (i.e. sight, hearing, etc) But these aren't distinct and they are hard to distinguish from each other Other psychologists argue that when an event is perceived, we only encode part that is from the original event and it becomes integrated with past knowledge and inference Steps involved in comprehension and subsequent retrieval: Environmental input, acquisition: interpretation at time of event based on existing knowledge and inference and fragments stored in memory, retention, retrieval: reconstruction of interpretation, response

Experiment 1

Purpose: focus → presence of the post identification feedback effect in a target-absent lineup under unbiased lineup instruction conditions. Shown film, then completed picture puzzle for 15 minutes, 8 picture lineup with an option showing not present button, given feedback (84 / 87 participants agreed with you) or no feedback (please wait), rated confidence retrospectively and currently Results - High proportion of participants correctly rejected the target-absent lineup; there was no difference in identification rates in the feedback and no-feedback conditions - Retrospective confidence: confidence higher after feedback

Semmler et al., "Effects of Postidentification Feedback on Eyewitness Identification and Nonidentification Confidence" Purpose Theoretical perspectives Key Issues Hypothesis

Purpose: investigate new dimensions of the effect of confirming feedback on eyewitness identification confidence using target-absent and target-present lineups and (previously unused) unbiased witness instructions (i.e., "offender not present" option highlighted). Theoretical Perspectives - Festinger's (1954) social comparison theory: people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing them alongside other people's opinions and abilities - Bem's (1972) self-perception theory: individuals come to know their own internal states at least in part by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. - Individuals come to know internal states via observations of their behavior and circumstances - If internal cues (accuracy) are weak, ambiguous or uninterpretable, the individual must rely on external cues to infer their own internal states → feedback - Bradfield et al. (2002) and Wells and Bradfield (1998): degree of ecphoric similarity: the degree of perceived similarity between a stimulus and a person's memory - Individuals will rely on external sources of information (e.g., feedback) when the internal cues are impoverished or weak, regardless of the precise nature of the deficiency. Key Issues - Whether we could duplicate the well-established feedback inflation effects in biased instructions using unbiased lineup instructions - Whether we should expect feedback inflation effects for all possible responses that a witness can give when presented with a lineup before we accept the ubiquitous nature of confidence inflation effects Hypothesis: Confidence inflation induced by confirming feedback would be reflected in confidence-accuracy relation characterized by more pronounced overconfidence than found in the absence of such feedback

Lynn et al 2009 The Efficacy of Mnemonic Components of the Cognitive Interview: Towards a Shortened Variant for Time-Critical Investigations Purpose, hypothesis, components of enhanced cognitive interview

Purpose: to test a shortened, modified version of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI) that could be used to cut down time for law enforcement interviews while still maintaining acceptable accuracy rates. Hypothesis: The Modified Cognitive Interview (MCI) would be just as effective as the ECI while being superior to the Structured Interview (SI). Original version of the Cognitive Interview was comprised of 4 mnemonic components: ➢ Mental Reinstatement of Context: mental recreation of the physical and personal context of the event in question. ➢ Report Everything: asks the witnesses to report as much as they can remember, even minute details. ➢ Recall Events in Different Orders (change order): asks the witness to recall the events in different order hopefully to elicit new information. ➢ Change Perspectives: asks witnesses to imagine and describe the event from somebody else's viewpoint.

Aspects that affect retrieval

Question wording who is asking the question confidence hypnosis

Discussion

Ratification of error: errors that occur early on in the criminal justice system (i.e. police investigation) are less likely to be discovered at higher levels (i.e. appellate review). It is like a manufacturing line without quality control. ○ Suggestions: improve the ability to detect and correct errors that lead to wrongful convictions Prevention ■ When eyewitness identification is the only evidence, a jury or judge should have a special pre-trial session to learn all information related in order to assess the adequacy, validity, and reliability ■ If eyewitness identification is used as evidence, expert witnesses and/or precise jury instructions should be used to inform juries on the fallibility of eyewitness accounts Exoneration ■ Authors suggest there should be no limitations on the right to appeal Compensation ■ Steps should be taken to compensate those who are wrongfully convicted for loss of liberty, reputation damage, expenses of justice system, and other damages related to incarceration

○ Reality of Memory ○ Memory Processes ○ Safeguards in place to protect the rights of the falsely accused

Reality of Memory ■ Long term memory is vast and estimated to hold 1 quadrillion separate bits of information ■ But, memories are malleable and susceptible to change. They are in a metaphorical crowded drawer that is constantly opened, reorganized, stuffed back in, removed, lost, etc. Each memory is reconstructed each time it is remembered, and for the most part, people are unaware of the distortions that take place ■ While memories may provide a good general account of events, they aren't reliable when referring to specific details Memory Processes ■ Acquisition ● Perception of an event with the brain's instantaneous decision to discard or insert this into memory "Event Factors" can influence perception ● Examples ○ Motivation/expectations ○ Violence/ stress ○ Dark/ light conditions Issues in retention and retrieval can occur ● Time ● Post event information or interference ○ i.e. suggestive or misleading police line ups, non-verbal suggestive behavior that confirms the subject is "right", photo biased line-ups, etc. ○ Safeguards in place to protect the rights of the falsely accused ■ Jury instructions ● However, they are sometimes confusing and hard for jurors to understand ■ Exert testimony ● Testify on the nature of human memory and psychological factors that affect eyewitness testimony

Response speed Did they notice it in the first place Concluding remarks

Response speed: Theorize that any conflicting information is resolved right at the time the misinfo is given because response speed is the same when misinfo is given and when it is not. Misinfo is accepted Did they notice it in the first place? It's more difficult to mislead a person if they noticed the object, but not impossible Conclusion: While these studies are suggestive of memory alteration, they are not conclusive. But they could have shown if the original memory was still in tact, but they also did not show that.

Results: crimes charged, severity of criminal sanctions, type of error, exoneration and compensation

Results ○ 46% of the cases of wrongful conviction occurred between 1920 and 1939 ○ Felony offenses were overrepresented as cases cited as false positives Crimes charged ■ Almost 45% of the known wrongful convicition cases were for murder, followed by robbery (30%), and forcible rape (12.1%) ■ However, no inferences can be drawn from this pattern because the sample is likely not representative of all wrongful convictions Severity of criminal sanctions ■ More than 10% of wrongful conviction cases were sentenced to death (luckily these were not carried out and it was likely the passage of time in between sentencing and punishment that allowed for exoneration) ■ In 34% of cases a life sentence was imposed Type of Error ■ Eyewitness misidentification accounted for 52% of the cases (but from the data we do not know where the error occurred in the process i.e. lineup procedures, cross race identification, etc.) Exoneration and Compensation ■ In 40.5% of exonerations the real culprit confessed, in 25.8% of cases a pardon was granted on the basis of new evidence, and in 20.5% of cases the conviction was set aside by a court ■ No common law set for action in cases of wrongful conviction. Reparation can be made, but it only happened in 17.1% of the cases here

Retention interval Witness intoxication

Retention interval - Longer delays lead to fewer correct identifications and more false identifications (Shapiro and Penrod 1986) Witness intoxication - Read, Yuille, & Tollestrup (1992, Experiment 1) found that alcohol intoxication while witnessing the event was associated with a lower rate of correct identifications; false identification rates were the same for intoxicated and sober participants. However, after one week the participants were no longer intoxicated, which raises the question of what the effect of intoxication at viewing and identification would be - Alcohol myopia theory: intoxicated witnesses encode salient cues but their awareness of subtle cues is greatly reduced - Dysart et al. (2002) examined the effect of alcohol consumption on identification accuracy using ''showups,'' (witness is shown suspect alone, without any fillers, procedure most likely to be used with intoxicated witnesses); in the target-present showup condition, blood-alcohol level was not significantly related to correct identification but in the target-absent condition, higher blood-alcohol levels were associated with a higher likelihood of false identification than lower blood-alcohol levels

Eyewitness Testimony Chapter 5: Retrieval Retrieval environment Could the environment of retrieval affect eyewitness reporting?

Retrieval Environment ➢ E.M. Abernathy (1940) ○ When students are tested outside the usual classroom and different instructor, they perform worse -Eyewitness implication: The "learning" aspect could be regarded when taking in the information of a crime. While the "testing" aspect could be regarded retrieving that information Could the environment of retrieval affect eyewitness reporting? ➢ Gustave Feingold (1914) ○ See if postcards, paired by similarity, could be identified as the same. If not, see if differences can be spotted. The original picture was given for five seconds. After a delay of 20 seconds, subjects were given the second postcard. First, the study looked at the length of the original exposure. Then, focused on the effect of recalling in a different environment ■ Results: When subjects recalled in a different environment ➝ inhibition of recognition

How much misinformation can you plant in one mind?: Rich false memories

Rich false memories -Sometimes subjects will start with very little memory, but after several suggestive interviews filled with misinformation they will recall the false events in quite a bit of detail. -Study, a subject received the suggestion that he or she went to the hospital at age 4 and was diagnosed as having low blood sugar. -Yet in the final inter- view in week 3, the subject developed a more detailed memory and even incorporated thoughts at the time into the recollection: " . . . I don't remember much about the hospital except I know it was a massive, huge place. I was 5 years old at the time and I was like 'oh my God I don't really want to go into this place, you know it's awful' . . . but I had no choice. They did a blood test on me and found out that I had a low blood sugar . . ." -It has led many subjects to believe or even remember in detail events that did not happen, that were com- pletely manufactured with the help of family members, and that would have been traumatic had they actually happened. *Some investigators have called this strong form of suggestion the "familial informant false narrative procedure" or lost in the mall technique* -Lost in mall technique generally produces 30% of subjects to produce a partial or complete full memory -Other techniques, such as those involving guided imagination (see Libby 2003 for an example), suggestive dream interpretation, or exposure to doctored photographs, have also led subjects to believe falsely that they experienced events in their distant and even in their recent past Study to implant memories that are impossible to have happened: -Several studies subjects were led to believe that they met Bugs Bunny at a Disney Resort after exposure to fake ads for Disney that featured Bugs Bunny. The single fake ad led 16% of subjects to later claim that they had met him, and ads that contained a picture of Bugs produced more false memories than ads that con- tained only a verbal mention

YUILLE AND CUTSHALL

STUDY ○ Interviewed 13 of 21 witnesses of a gun-shooting ○ Interviews took place 4-5 months after the incident. The duration of the interviews were about 45-90 min in length. ○ One of the questions was a misleading question. The witnesses were asked if they had seen the broken headlight of the thief, instead of asking if they had seen a broken headlight. There was no broken headlight. RESULTS ○ Attempts to mislead the witness with biased questioning were unsuccessful. This could be due to the fact that the study took place 4-5 months after the incident. Misleading questions would be most useful shortly after the incident ○ Stress had no negative effect on memory in this study ○ Most of the witnesses had high accuracy accounts 5 months after the event ○ Specifics of the event were not recalled by the witnesses, such as, colors of clothing, height, weight, and age

Witness factors: Stress, yerkes dodson law, valentine and mesout 2009,

Stress · Yerkes Dodson law o Inverted U stress curve, low and high arousal reduce performance, best performance at moderate amount of arousal. Low arousal waking up, high arousal fear/panic o BUT this study was done with mice Velentine and Mesout 2009 o London dungeon study Tour horror labyrinth and encounter scary person (7 minutes) 45 minutes passs then state anxiety and target-present photo lineup Steilberger state anxiety inventiory: 20 items about how they felt while in maze, gave a target present 6 pack linup If people had high state anxiety had very low accuracy when identifying the target 17% low state anxiety 79%, foil 52% for high 21% low Limitation scary but does not equate to crime

Witness factors Stress expectations perceptual activity

Stress ● Yerkes-Dodson Law: strong motivational states, such as stress or other emotional arousal, facilitate learning and performance up to a point, after which there is decreasement. This point is determined by the difficulty of the task ○ Possible explanation: Increases in stress produce a narrowing of attention. Or, under high stress people concentrate more, but on only a few features of the environment Weapon focus: When a crime occurs where the assailant is brandishing a weapon, the weapon captures a great deal of the victims attention Expectations ● Our perceptions are influenced by our expectations ○ Cultural expectations/stereotypes: a belief held by a large number of people within a given culture ■ Stereotypes ○ Expectations from past experiences ○ Personal prejudices ○ Momentary or temporary expectations Perceptual Activity ● Perceiving based in terms of personality characteristics produced better recognition scores than perceptions based on facial features

· Stress witness factors · Weapon focus · Expectations (4 different ways can be influenced in ET book) Treadway and McCloskey 1987 Evidence Boon and Davies 1987

Stress witness factors o Deffenabcher et al 2004 o Meta analysis of 63 studies o High levels of stress negatively impact - Correct facial IDs - Accuracy of crime related details Weapon focus (an event factor) o Focus attention on weapon, poorer Expectations (4 different ways can be influenced in ET book) o Cultural expectations -Alport and postman 1947 · In over half of the chains, someone reported the black man had a razor when in reality it was the white man. Methodology is like a game of telephone to show how rumors/gossip start. Through the course of telephone razor moved from white man to black man Treadway and McCloskey 1987 · Goal: to emphasize importance of reading original sources · Argument: original goal of alllport and postman was to study rumor, but study often misreported in the ET literature · Many people are misreporting the results of allport study Evidence: o loftus 1979: subject viewed briefly, really viewed picture while describing it, last subject says razor switched, but really at some point in the chain. ACTUAL study the first subject described the picture while looking at it, and just somewhere in the chain the razor switched o buckhout, yarmey, luce: all subjects view picture briefly later half report seated black man with razor o woocher: classic experiment on social prejudice, showed all subjects picture o highly prejudiced subjects made more mistakes · What if you did the study the way people say it was done? All subjects view picture of white man holding large knife, no weapon shift. Their experiment used GIANT kitchen knife instead of small razor blade. Boon and Davies 1987 · Subjects view picture of white man holding less blatant knife · Weapon shifts from white to black much more than black to white · Social prejudices/bias

● Subjective Recollections can change ● Nonverbal Influences ● Investigations by Police and Attorneys

Subjective Recollections can change ○ Subjects interrogated with questions worded in an emotional, aggressive manner reported that the incident was more violent and noisier, that the perpetrators were more belligerent, and that the students in the classroom were more antagonistic than the subjects who had neutral and passive questionnaires Nonverbal Influences ○ The tone of voice, movement of head and eyes, gaze, posture, and other (sometimes subtle) behaviors can be used to convey ideas, and tamper with memories and confidence Investigations by Police and Attorneys ○ Ideas can be transmitted to the witness and affect their memory ○ A study found that witnesses interviewed by attorneys for the defendant gave testimonies that were biased in favor of the defendant, even when the evidence of the case favored the plaintiff

System Variables Cognitive Interview

System Variables - Variables that can be controlled in actual cases (separating witnesses after an event) -Social influence (Rounds pressured by police to identify Newsome) and memory variables - Interviewing eyewitnesses (recall memory) and identification of suspects (recognition memory) Cognitive Interview - CI developed at the request of police officers and legal professionals to improve the practices of police interviewers when gathering information from eyewitnesses - Alliance of communication and cognition - Makes interview more like a conversation so the witness can speak more freely - Phased procedure: free report followed by open-ended questions, with techniques to facilitate communication - Steps: Build rapport, Recreate the context of the original event and ask the witness to report in detail, Open-ended narration, Closure - Goal to allow witness to be comfortable and in control, while allowing for unmanipulated retrieval - No effect on recognition, but did elicit better descriptions of the target as compared with a no-instruction control a reduction in false identifications in target-absent conditions

What is the misinformation effect? What are the main questions that have been answered about it?

The misinformation effect is the name given to the change (usually for the worse) in reporting that arises after receipt of misleading information. 1. Under what conditions are people particularly susceptible to the negative impact of misinformation? (The When Question) 2. Can people be warned about misinformation, and successfully resist its damaging influence? 3. Are some types of people particularly susceptible? (The Who Question) 4. When misinformation has been embraced by individuals, what happens to their original memory? 5. What is the nature of misinformation memories? 6. How far can you go with people in terms of the misinforma- tion you can plant in memory?

Loftus 2005 Planting misinformation in the human mind: a 30 year investigation of the malleability of memory

The misinformation effect refers to the impairment in memory for the past that arises after exposure to misleading information. The phenomenon has been investigated for at least 30 years, as investigators have addressed a number of issues. These include the conditions under which people are especially susceptible to the negative impact of misinformation, and conversely when are they resistant. Warnings about the potential for misinformation sometimes work to inhibit its damaging effects, but only under limited circumstances. The misinformation effect has been observed in a variety of human and nonhuman species. And some groups of individuals are more susceptible than others. At a more theoretical level, investigators have explored the fate of the original memory traces after exposure to misinformation appears to have made them inaccessible. This review of the field ends with a brief discussion of the newer work involving misinformation that has explored the processes by which people come to believe falsely that they experienced rich complex events that never, in fact, occurred.

Who is asking the question

The perceived authority of the interrogator is an important factor in interviewing. Marshall study (1966): watch film, one group was asked questions by law professor other by police captain in uniform. Groups that had a status figure present gave longer reports and the law students were seen to also give more inferences about motives and events not directly depicted. Marquis and colleagues (1972): Focusing if whether the attitude of the integrator would influence a witness's reports. Watch film, interviewed with free report with either supportive or challenging interviewer. Results: Supportive interviewer: subjects felt happier and positive about the interview however no effect on overall quality (accuracy and completeness) of report *interviewer atmosphere had no performance effect*

Retention (ADD IN FROM BOOK)

Time is passing other things can happen during this time Length of attention interval Forgetting curve Post event information - Retention: if you want to maximize the chances that someone will fall for misinformation, you want to introduce it later on before retrieval because if introduce early youll forget both original and misinformation. Let memory face fisrt bc weakened memory is more susceptible to misinformation and contamination. Later is better. Study said one week delay. Legal implications: interview witnesses separately (to avoid contamination), do not provide feedback to witnesses. Ethical issues: is it ethical for defense lawyer to give misinformation to witness? Misinformation

Type of fact, duration of event, violence

Type of fact: witnesses have difficulty estimating o Weather: o Weight o Distance o Speed Duration of event - Overestimate, even more so when stressed, and women overestimate more than men. (in loftus' study) - Implications of overestimating: · Legal · Self defense? · Jurors' perceptions: if someone overestimeate jurors mught be persuaded if they said they looked for 5 min instead of the actual 30s. this often comes up in expert testimony · Suing 911 said took them 30 minutes when in reality it was only 8 min Violence of event - Clifford and scott (1978): non violent movie or violent movie, time passes, then memory test - Memory for details of a violent event vs non violetn -Subjects recall details of the violent movie more poorly than the nonviolent movie - Tested memory for identical portions of the movie (the two movies had same beginning and end, the middle portion either contained violence or not violence). - Did the beginning portion of the film have poor performance or is it the end? They didn't clarify

How should we study WCs?, Ratter's goal, policy recommendations, Percentage of WC vs actual crime percentages

What is best way to study wrongful convictions? o Survey inmates? judges? Lawyers? o Review documented cases? · Guilty people would ask for a dna test they are doing it for their family it comes back you so no, · Very hard thing to study Rattner's goal o To understand casues of and factors associated with WCs o Method: gathered data on 205 WCs o Results: sentence, most prison, some life, some death o Crime: 45% of WCs were murder o Causes 52% of Wcs are ET errors o Exonerated: real culprit confesses, pardon based on new evidence o 45 murder, 30 robbery. 12 rape, 7 forgery, 3 larceny, 2 assalut, .05 arson o interesting limitation: likely not be representative to the gen pop of actual wrongful convictions Policy recommendations: - expert restimony, jury instructions - no limit on rights to appeal - compensation o Rattner estimates .5% of all FBI index crimes are wrongful convictions. If .5% 8,500 wrongful convictions per year FBI data base of distribution of crimes in 1 year o 1% murder, 6 robbery, 2 rape. 3 forgery, 43 larceny, 46 assault, 1 arson

● Chapter 2: ○ What people believe about memories, why people believe this, loftus and loftus experiment

What people believe about memories ■ That they are stable ■ Immune to outside interference ■ Can store vivid details about events, even after a long time Where people believe this ■ Sigmund Freud: long term memories can be stored, perfectly intact, deep within the unconscious mind. Most people accept this version of human memory ■ Wilder Penfield: research on epiletic patients work used to support the theory that memories are permanent and stable ■ Personal experience about retrieving a memory that subjects had not thought about in a long time Loftus and Loftus ■ 169 professionals (75 graduate training vs 94 non-graduate training) on perception of how human memory works ■ Asked to choose which statement better reflects how memory operates: ● Everything learned perfectly stored, can be retrieved with hypnosis ● Some details permanently lost and can never be recovered with hypnosis or other special techniques ■ Results: 84% psychologists and 69% of non psychologists chose #1

Under what conditions are people particularly susceptible to the negative impact of misinformation? (The When Question) Discrepancy Detection principle Warnings

When Question -People are particularly prone to having their memories be affected by misinformation when it is introduced after the passage of time has allowed the original event memory to fade. One reason this may be true is that with the passage of time, the event memory is weakened, and thus, there is less likelihood that a discrepancy is noticed while the misinformation is being processed -Discrepancy Detection principle: Recollections are more likely to change if a person does not immediately detect discrepancies between misinformation and memory for the original event (must false memories can still occur even if one does notice) -The other important time interval is the period between the misinformation and the test. Overall, subjects were slightly more likely to say "both" (22%) than "event only" (17%). But the timing of the test affected these ratios. With a short interval between the misinformation and the test, subjects are less likely to claim that the misinformation item was in the event only -Temporarily changing one's state also affects memory: if people are led to believe that they have drunk alcohol, they are more susceptible and when people are hypnotized, they are more susceptible Warning: -Long ago, researchers showed that warning people about the fact that they might in the future be exposed to misinformation sometimes helps them resist the misinformation. However, a warning given after the misinformation had been processed did not improve the ability to resist its damaging effects. They can better resist its influence, perhaps by increasing the likelihood that the person scrutinizes the post-event information for discrepancies. BUT ONLY IN LIMITED CIRCUMSTANCES (only when misinformation was in a relatively low state of accessibility)

Incentives Second guessing Blatantly false information

When incentives were provided to recall accurate info, money or "highest intelligence" did not motivate accurate memory retrieval. There was no difference in misinformation effect between groups Second guessing: -Giving misinformation of colors. When colors are next to each other (blue, green) the most 44% pick misinfo then second guess 82% got right giving support to both coexistence and alteration. -When the colors were separated by an intervening color (yellow, blue) 26% chose the misinfo but then 77% incorrectly chose green as their second choice even though yellow was original color shown. giving support to alteration hypothesis -in most studies, subjects choices tended to be a mix of what they saw and what they were told if they saw blue and told green (or vice versa) they generally picked blueish green -This was also replicated with stop, yield, and no parking signs -While convincing this doesn't prove that the memory was altered, this indirect method of must suffice until science can distinguish between a temporarily unavailable memory and fully gone original memory Blatantly false info: -subjects who were given a blatantly false info were able to better resist false info in the subtler scenarios in which they otherwise would not have been immune (5 suggestibility paragraphs, blatant red wallet turned brown, subtle green notebook turned blue) -presenting misinformation, then waiting a period of time and present blatantly false info does not show the same effect. The first subtle missing integrates into memory, so the later blatantly false info does not show same protective factor

Retrieval Autosuggestion Witness for the Defense:

When people try to remember what happened at evetn, answer questions, testify, identify at lineup, final stage of memory Memory does not work like a video recorder, but divided into 3 major stages What factors come into play at each stage that affect accuracy, completeness, confidence, etc. expressed by eyewitness Autosuggestion · Self generated suggestion that could fill in gaps and solidify what happened in your own memory (punded nail into the wall, did you hear me talk about john hitting the nail with the hammer, yes, fill in this gap) · DMR studies o Said bed, snooze, pillow, blanket o Did you hear me say the word sleep? Many say yes · Guessing can later become memories, its self generated so it could be auto suggestion, it could happen with police and psychotherapists to. Good study to establish empirical study for autosuggestion Witness for the Defense: · They were going to call an expert witness but then didn't because they had the phone call, defense was blindsided by time change, victim was convincing, and he was convicted.

Are some types of people particularly susceptible? (The Who Question)

Young children and older adults are more susceptible. Misinformation effects are stronger when attentional resources are limited. BUT suggestion-induced distortion in memory is a phe- nomenon that occurs with people of all ages, even if it is more pronounced with certain age groups. Greater susceptibility to misinformation such as empathy, absorption, self-monitoring, and the more one has self-reported lapses in memory and attention Missinfo effects have also been seen with 3 month old infants, gorillas, pigeons, and rats. One challenging as- pect of these studies is finding ways to determine that misinfor- mation had taken hold in species that are unable to explicitly say so. Moreover, like humans, pigeons are more susceptible to the misinformation if it occurs later in the original-final test interval than if it occurs early in that interval. Misinfo is not just retrograde interference (a mere disruption in performance, not a biasing effect. That is, it typically makes memory worse, but does not pull for any particular wrong answer) and not a product of demand characteristics since its found in these nonverbal beings

Misinformation and neuroimaging Protecting against misinformation effects False memories Implications

fMRI: True and false memories showed similar patterns of brain activity, but true memories showed more activation in visual cortex while false memories showed more activation in auditory context (where they initially formed their memory/sensory modalities is how they recalled it, true with pictures, false with audio). However, not sure if this is reliable due to not distinct areas of activation, small differences, and general limitations of neuroimaging studies Protecting against misinformation effects: -cognitive interview: use of free recall, contextual cues, tem- poral ordering of events, and recalling the event from a variety of perspectives (such as from a perpetrator's point of view). Also, the CI recommends that investigators avoid suggestive questioning, develop rapport with the witness, and discourage witnesses from guessing -study: Results showed that the CI deterred the effects of suggestion, but only when it came before the suggestive inter- view. Though the investigative process would ideally be free of all suggestive influence, a properly implemented cognitive interview may help protect the integrity of an eyewitness's memory. False memory: -Study: a handful of studies have emerged in which subjects are simply asked if they have seen video footage of well-known news events, when in fact no such video footage exists. -Study: Loftus and Pickrell's Lost in the Mall study (1995), a series of studies have successfully used personalized suggestion (or other suggestive techniques) to plant false memories of traumatic childhood events, receiving a painful enema, and even impossible events such as meeting Bugs Bunny—a Warner Brothers charac- ter—at Disneyland Suggestion can cause people to remember things that they've never seen, or incorporate post event info of hearing something about a perpetrators face when they never saw it at the crime, could have implications for legal system. Unfortunately, in spite of recent scientific advances, many eyewitness errors continue to go undetected and can have devastating consequences.

Arrest of Steve titus Trial began Contact of reporter Henderson

gave voluntary statement with no lawyer. Next few weeks told him he needed to take a polygraph, did but failed probably due to fear and nervousness Trial begins ● During Nancy Van Roper's testimony, she stated she was picked up at 6:30 p.m., which was fifteen minutes earlier than her original statement to police. (This allowed for more time for the potential rape to have occurred by Titus) ● Detective Ronald Parker took the stand stated that he saw a brown vinyl binder in the back of Steve Titus' car the night Titus was pulled over. He also stated that Titus had originally admitted that he arrived at 6:55p.m., versus 6:30 p.m. which Titus had stated. Steve Titus was found guilty of first degree rape Contact reporter: ● Steve Titus was out on bail while awaiting his sentencing when he contacted reporter, Paul Henderson, to review his case ○ Paul Henderson was able to track down a report from October 6, 1981, which was close in proximity to the sexual assault of Nancy Van Roper ■ The victim identified her rapist as a male with a beard, around 29-30 years old, in light blue sports car, took her down 22nd Avenue South, held a weapon to her throat and assaulted her

Wells: pleading effect outshining hypothesis

how the mistaken identification rate can be expected to be higher at the trial level than at the lineup level the influence of contextual cues will be reduced or will be outshone when there are strong retrieval cues present at the time of the memory test. For instance, in a recognition test in which a copy of the item to be remembered is provided, this item serves as a retrieval cue, and contextual cues are rendered ineffective.

Robert Buckhout: history, studies, contributions, limitations

o Born in 1935 in queens ny o Earned phd from ohio state o In late 60s and early 70s started mission to rescue munsterbergs work and theories o Started as professor at Washington university in st Louis Garbage bag study (loftus said this is dumb study) - Dressed student in black bag and sent him to other classes - Asked students in classes to describe person in bag - Most reports described more than just the black bag (e.g. identified as black man, a nut, etc.) - After study did not get tenure Moved and began teaching at cal state Hayward then back to Brooklyn college o Began testifying as expert witness on eyewitness error o By 1976 he testified 22 times as expert witness, excluded 30 times o Consulted high profile cases of angela davis, father pagano, and kirk bloodsworth Conducted real life demos to show the fallibility of eyewitness testimony NBC study -12 second clip of a staged purse snatching -presented with a lineup - vote for the correct perpetrator - out of 2145 phone calls how many mistaken identifications, only by chance did people get it Buckhouts contributions - Creative applied studies - Sparked lawyers interst in issue of eyewitness error - Began wave of expert testimony Limiations - Demos showed eyewitness misktakes but didn't explain why or who - Uselfuness of expert testimony? -Increase jurors skepticism of correct eyewitness accounts - Accepted criticism and hoped to motivate more research - Diagnosed with brain tumore and died from seizure

Gary Wells: history, what did he study, relative judgement theory, white paper, NIJ technical group

o Born in Kansas? o Internationally ranked pool player o Paid for collehe at Kansas state o 1977 earned phd from ohio state o distinguished professor at Iowa State o received call from buckhout while in grad school o presented work with bukhout at APA against warning of faculty at osu o charmed by buckhout and began eyewitness research o different approach then buckhout o realized police were not going to throw out all eyewitness testimony Examined factors under control of crim justice system - system (things controlled by the system) vs estimator (age, cross race, etc) variables - system variables · double blind lineup- gold standard (doenst know who the suspect is. But police often have lead investigator do it) · lineup instructions · fillers (what should they look like, how many?) - estimator · age · stress Wells focused on system variables things police can do prevent mistakes before they happen Known for relative judgment theory - lineup most like a multiple choice test - unlike true false test need to compare answers - relative to others #4 looks most like - don't want them to do this, want them to make absolute judgeement - studied how to reduce relative judgements 1998 white paper on system variables - provided 4 recommendations on how to conduct lineups · double blind lineup · lineup instruction: reduce pressure to pick someone, the suspect may or may not be present, don't have to pick someone · fillers resemble suspect in lineup · immediate confidence statements 1999 NIJ formed technical working group for Eyewitness evidence - team of prosecutors - published training manuals for police officers based on guide - it had little practical effect - The NDAA said: not all witnesses are alike, they think witnesses can tell and are right, denied psych in any legal role. - Defense attorneys loved the guide, educating juries, some states bagan reforms - Judges decided to let euewitness issues play out in court - Police can run their own proceudres, but now more interested in procedures that are better, but many don't especially in small areas

· Elizabeth Loftus: history, drive, memory stages, identification of people, solutions to eyewitness problem

o Born in LA, BA in UCLA, PhD from Stanford o Professor at Washington state university o Distinguished professor at UCI since 2002 o Munsterberg driven by desire to give psychology profession respect, buckhout driven by desire to ensure rights of minority defendents Loftus driven by empathy for falsely accused Loftus Demo - Simulated crimes/accidents, you need to know what the truth is, and then can study certain things from it. - She could study · Event factors: loftus studied event factors with post event suggestion that effected the memory · Witness factors Three stages of memory: acquisition, retention, retrieval · Ac: period of time crime happens some info gets into memory · Re: time is passing memory is fading other factors come into play · Retriev: someone tries to answer question son what they saw or identification or testifying in court. Multiple retrievals Identification of people · Innocence project · Eyewitness errors in more than 70% of cases · Eyewitness errors remains single most important cause of wrongful imprisonment · Brandon garret: dna exonerations and eyewitness testimony, found causes of what lead to convictions. Eyewitness memory number 1 cause in this · Joseph abbitt: charged of rape in NC convicted in 95 served 14 years exonerated in 2009 and cause was mis ID · Steven barnes: rape, sodomy, murder, 20 years, exonerated by mis ID, bad snitches, bad forensics · Father Pagano: exonerated by real perp coming forward. Likely 6-7 people id him because of suggestive interviewing or test isn't fair (bad fillers in a lineup) Solutions to Eyewitness problem? · Jury instructions · Expert testimony

Duration of events is often Cross race identification About eyewitness identification

overestimated o Which could give undue weight on the accuracy of details for jurors · Cross race identification is much more difficult Eyewitness Identification · Estimated 75,000 prosecutions rely on eyewitness testimony per year in the US · Many IDs are right · Very convincing evidence · "I'll never forget his face" · but 100s of years of research shows eyewitness memory is susceptible to error · huge implications for legal system

Detective parker's photo lineup

■ Detective Parker constructed a photo lineup, containing six males, with two photos of each individuals ■ All males in the photo lineup were similar looking in age with long, brown hair and a full beard ■ Titus stood out from the rest due to his smiling appearance, the size and background color differences of his photo compared to the rest (biased photo lineup) Nancy Van Roper was brought several pictures by the police to see if she could identify her attacker ■ After studying each photo for a few minutes, and receiving validating comments from detectives, she identified her rapist as Steve Titus

Steve titus' first account

■ Detective Ronald Parker, accompanied by Officer Robert Jensen cruising for cars that matched the description the witness gave ■ Officers came across a light-blue Chevette with temporary places at Raintree Restaurant and Lounge, outside of Seattle ■ Officers pulled over 31 years old, Steve Titus Steve Titus informed the officers that he had done the following during the night in question: ■ He had been celebrating his father's birthday at parents' home for most of the afternoon and early evening ■ 6:10 p.m. he left the home of his parents and drove back to his apartment in Kent, WA ■ 6:30 p.m. arrived home ■ 6:45-6:50 p.m. his friend, Kurt Schaefer, arrived and they watched television with his friend (verified by Schaefer) ■ 7:00 p.m. made a long-distance phone (verified by long-distance records) ■ 9:20 p.m. left his apartment to pick up his fiancée from her work at Raintree Restaurant and Lounge ■ The officers interviewed his Titus' fiancée, took a picture of Titus and searched his car before allowing them to leave

Witness for the Defense: Chapter Three- Steve Titus Victim and crime initial description gave by victim

■ Victim: Nancy Van Roper, 17 yrs. ■ Hitchhiking on the shoulder of Pacific Highway South, outside of Seattle ■ Light-blue compact car pulls over to offer her a ride to Tacoma ■ Driver turned down a dirt road, claiming that he needed to stop by his sister's house, located at 22nd Avenue South ■ Driver stopped car near abandon home and put a weapon to the victim's throat. The driver then sexually assaulted Nancy Van Roper, before leaving her behind at the scene of the crime. Initial: ■ Male, 25-30 years old, light brown hair, shoulder length, six feet tall, medium build, with full beard ■ Victim gave the following description of the rapist's car as: ■ Royal blue color, compact model, around 1980 model ■ Seats were velveteen upholstery, bucket style seats ■ Temporary license plates in rear window ■ Brown vinyl folder or binder noted in backseat

CHRISTIANSON & LOFTUS: method

○ 3 groups of subjects were given 15 slides of black and white images. Those 15 slides were divided up into 3 groupings of 5 slides each. ○ There were 2 sets of images: traumatic and non-traumatic. The traumatic images contained the 2nd grouping contained images of a child getting hit by a car, and suffering injuries. The non-traumatic images removed the injurious images and replaced them with a child walking with his mother through the park. The 1st and 3rd groupings of images were similar for both sets. ○ 1st experimental group were told to write down the most distinguishing feature of each slide (15 total), such as, "blood" or "eye injury". They were asked to recall the events after a 15 minute filler task was done. ○ The 2nd group was given the lists of words from the 1st group unaware of the nature of the slides (traumatic or non-traumatic). They had the lists for 45 seconds, then were given a filler task for 3 minutes. They were asked to recall the list of 15 words given previously. ○ The 3rd group was divided into 2 subsections: a & b. A was given a video of a bank robbery, one which contained violent images, and one that did not. They were shown the video, then were contacted via telephone 6 months later and asked to recall the details of the events that occured in the video. B was the same group as experiment who were asked to recall the events as best possible after a 6-month duration.

● Intervening thoughts of a witness: labeling, guessing, freezing

○ Labeling: the way a person labels a given object or situation can dramatically affect the way that situation is remembered (given non descript object, labeled as one thing draw it more like the way labeled than the actual picture. Works with assigned labels and self generated labels) ■ A subject's linguistic responses to an object can cause distortions similar to those that have been observed when others provide the information externally Guessing: When a witness is uncertain, guessing can fill gaps in memory ■ Later during recall, a witness may recall what earlier was a guess as a part of the memory ■ Also, guesses that originally are offered with low confidence may have an increase in confidence level later when the witness recalls it as a fact of memory ■ Why? ● Guessing may cause changes in the witness's underlying memory representation ● Social pressures of witnesses to be accurate and confident Freezing Effects: statements that appear in an early recollection tend to reappear later on (whether true or not)

Witness for the Defense ● Chapter 1

○ Loftus' start in the research of memory and how it applies to the real world Studies found: ● Memory organized by concepts or categories ● Suggestibility of memory Published a Psychology today article on how she consulted with a Seattle public defender on aspects of a case, and suddenly many people contacted her for help in their own cases (rape, murder, etc.) ■ Worked on many guilty cases in her time (Ted Bundy, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi the "Hillside Stranglers", the McMartin Preschool case, etc.) with the ultimate goal of dispelling the myth that human memory is infallible and cannot be distorted ○ The loaded emotional response to a defense's expert witness is due to the adversarial nature of the criminal justice system. What the prosecution sees is that they have the right person, and it is their duty to put that person behind bars. ○ Unfortunately, eyewitness testimony holds a lot of weight in court based on laypeople's beliefs of how human memory works.

WELLS, MEMON, AND PENROD (pgs 49-51) ● COMMON METHODS USED IN EYEWITNESS RESEARCH

○ Primary strength of lab-based experiments are establishing cause-effect relations. ○ Any manipulation of variables is expected to cause better or worse performance. ○ Yullie and Cutshall study -- people with higher stress had better memory. In experimental setting, stress was manipulated, while other factors were constant. In the actual shooting, those closer had higher stress and a better view. ○ Experiments cannot generalize results of actual cases. ○ "Ground truths" (actual facts of witnessed events) are difficult, if not impossible to establish in actual cases. ○ Video experiments are more cost efficient when conducting a study, in comparison to a live experiment. They are optimal for studying eyewitness processes. ○ Subjects are given a photo lineup. Target-absent lineups mimic real-world events as well as being cost efficient ○ Participants include many populations such as college students, young children, adults, and the elderly. ○ College students are most accurate eyewitnesses. They have higher education levels, intelligence, memory ability, visual acuity, and general health. ○ Eyewitness research done with only college students may paint an unrealistic picture of eyewitness abilities. ○ Archival analyses compare DNA exonerations to photo lineups from police records ○ Filler lineup identifications are made and increase the margin of error ○ Filler identification rate was 20.8% for violent crimes and 17.6% for non-violent crimes ○ At the trial level, 16% of defendants will be cases of mistaken identity.

experiment 2

○ Replication of the first experiment but with two modifications: ■ 1) replaced recall test with recognition test to see if detrimental effects of mental shock are apparent when tested. This was done by adding a 4-option forced-choice test. They were given a multiple choice question in regards to the boy's jersey number. The options included 10, 13, 1, and 17. The actual number was 17. ■ 2) there was a third version of the film added where the ending included a police car in the parking lot instead of the shooting scene. The new scene does not include any violent images. ○ Only 28% of respondents answered correctly in regards to the number on the jersey in the violent version. ○ 55% and 52% of respondents answered correctly to the number on the jersey in the non-violent versions.

experiment 3

○ Same as above experiment except another non-violent scene was added. One in which a beach scene in inserted instead of the shooting scene. ○ This experiment yielded the same results as above; the jersey details were remembered in the non-violent versions. ● The results confirmed that exposure to mentally shocking events can cause retrograde amnesia for other events that occur in the short period of time before the traumatic event. ● The results suggest that witnesses to emotionally traumatic events may be less able to recall key events that occurred prior to the eruption of the trauma

Results

○ The findings from Experiment 1 concluded that the more traumatic the event, the more the essence of the event was remembered. Yet, when a recognition test was given (testing of peripherals of the scene), the traumatic group did more poorly than the neutral group. This means that when a traumatic event occurs, you are less likely to recall smaller details of the event. ○ The findings from Experiment 2 concluded that both groups of people who were given lists of words memorized the same average number of words, meaning that the words themselves are not memorable. ○ The findings from Experiment 3a concluded that 46% of the 41 subjects contacted from the study were able to recall the essence of the traumatic event, in contrast to 21% of non-traumatic were able to recall the event. ○ The findings from Experiment 3b concluded that 17 of the 19 (89%) people contacted 6-months later were able to recall the traumatic events, whereas, only 12 of the 23 (52%) people were able to recall the essence of events.

TREADWAY & MCCLOSKEY

● Psychologists are failing to read research literature carefully and are misinterpreting results. ● Other researchers read their findings incorrectly and produce more research from incorrect data ● This is creating a snowball effect on eyewitness perception and testimony research, and it is making its way into court proceedings ● Allport and Postman conducted a study of a rumor, which is used in many researchers studies' today. ● The study mimicked a game of 'telephone', which a member of the audience views an image of a white man holding a razor blade confronting a black man on a bus, then is asked to relay the information from the image to a subject who has not seen the image. The subject then repeats the details of the image to the next subject who cannot view the image. This process is repeated for the 6 or 7 subjects total in the experiment. ● Loftus claims that the first subject sees the image then describes, when in fact, the initial participant describes the image while viewing it, and the first subject never sees it. ● Buckhout claims that all subjects were briefly shown the image and described it incorrectly (black man was holding the razor blade rather than the white man). ● Yarney also remembers the study as all subjects being shown the image ● Some remember the black man sitting, while the white man stands ● Their studies led to conclusions based on biases and prejudices. ● The inaccurate description and interpretation of the study has made its way into law review articles and legal handbooks ● It also made its way into the courtroom where expert witnesses use this study to support their contentions about effects of biases *● One must not rely on secondary sources, especially when writing for audiences such as attorneys, judges, and jurors.*

LOFTUS & BURNS experiment 1

● Retrograde amnesia refers to the loss of memory for events that occur prior to some critical incident such as a head injury. EXPERIMENT 1: ○ 266 students from the University of Washington watched a short film of a bank robbery ○ Half of the participants watched a violent version where two young boys were playing in the parking lot when one of them gets shot in the face. ○ The other half of the participants watched a non-violent version where a scene is shown in lieu of the shooting that shows the bank manager calming down the customers and employees. ○ They were given a questionnaire (recall test). ○ The questionnaire included a question that asked if they remembered the number on the boy's jersey. Only 4.3% of subjects recalled the number on the boy's jersey prior to the violent incident, whereas 27.9% of people recalled the number on the boy's jersey in the non-violent version.

Case outcome

● Seattle Times published two articles about Steve Titus' story, push intern postponed his sentencing ● Judge Charles V. Johnson granted Titus a new trial ● Charges against Titus were dropped by the prosecutor's office ○ Prosecutor's office came forward that they had a new suspect, Danny Stone, a convicted serial rapist ■ Danny Stone was later convicted and sentenced to a mental health facility ● Steve Titus died at age 35 of heart failure prior to new civil trial to sue for the money ● Steve Titus's estate received $2.8 million in compensation from the Port of Seattle

Main takeaways

➢ The hypothesis was supported: the MCI was comparable to the ECI while both were superior to the SI. ➢ The free recall phases of the MCI and ECI were most effective in eliciting correct info compared to the SI. ➢ Replacing the Change Order and Change Perspectives mnemonics had little effect on the total number of correct items recalled; efficacy of these two are questionable. ➢ Change Order: resulted in less correct info than the motivated recall attempt. ➢ Change Perspective: resulted in less correct info and less accurate info than the motivated recall attempt; first to be considered for removal. ➢ The MCI may result in 87% as much correct info while saving 23% more time ➢ The MCI is a viable alternative when time is limited.