PSYCH 403 Chapters 5 and 6

Stages of memory

perception/attention, encoding, short term memory, long term memory, retrieval

Perception/Attention Stage

"I see an unfamiliar male. I notice he has a round face and bushy eyebrows"

Encoding Stage

percieve and pay attention to details in your environment

ex. Male, round face, bushy eyebrows

Short-term memory

Has limited capacity. Third stage

"Male, Full eyebrows"

Long-Term Memory

Can be accessed and retrieved as needed.

Retrieval Stage

Bringing back information from LTM back to memory

T/F Not every piece of information will go through all the memory stages

True.

Myths about Eyewitnesses

Memory is like a videotape - an exact representation of what occurred

The wording of a question does not influence an eyewitness' response

Greater stress improves an eyewitness' memory

The race of the eyewitness and perpetrator has no impact on identification accuracy

the presence of a weapon does not impact an eyewitness' memory

Higher stress levels can result in ____ memory for both perpetrator's appearance recollection and other crime details

poorer

Relevance of race of eyewitness and perpretrator

Better able to identify members of their own race when compared to different races. known as the cross-race effect

Cross race effect

Effect of being able to better identify a member of own race as compared to other race

Weapon focus

When a weapon is present, witnesses focus on that and have less reliable memory for other aspects

Recall Memory

Reporting Details of a previously witnessed event or person

ex. hearing a set of voices and IDing the perpretrator

Recognition Memory

Determining whether a previously seen item or person is the same as what is currently being viewed

ex. Identifying clothing worn by the prepretrator during the crime

Lab Sulation key details

Unknowing participant views critical event (via, slides, video, or live). Unaware they'll be questioned. asked to describe after.

Independent Variables in Lab sim

Estimator, System

Estimator Variables

Independent

Variables that are present at the time of the crime and cannot be changed

ex. age of witness, amound of lighting, presence of a weapon, and if the witness was intoxicated

System Variables

Independent

Variables that can be manipulated to increase (or decrease) eyewitness accuracy

Dependent variables in lab sim

Recall of the event/crime, recall of the perp., recognition of the perp.

Two ways of racalling crime or perp:

Dependent

Open-ended recall/free narrative

Direct Question Recall

Open ended recall / Free narrative

Witnesses are asked to either write or orally state all they remember about the event without the officer (or experimenter) asking questions

For recall of crime or perp

ex. asking to describe the perp

Direct Question Recall

Dependent

Witnesses are asked a series of specific questions about the crime or the perp.

For recalling crim or perp

ex. asked the colour of the getaway car or length of perps hair

Witness' recall ofthe crime or perp can be examined for...

Amount of info reported

Type of info reported

Accuracy of information reported

(Amount, type, accuracy)

Recognition of the Perp dependent variables

Typical task is a lineup.

Lineup

Dependent / Recognize Perp

A set of people presented to the witness, who must state whether the perpetrator is present and, if so, which person it is

Could also be voices or clothing

Witness' recognition response can be eximed for the following:

Accuracy of decision, Types of Errors made

(Accuracy, Types)

For PERP RECOGNITION, NOT RECALL

Primary goal of officer interviewing an eyewitness

extract a complete and accurate report of what happened

Error in limiting potential info by

interrupting the witness during open-ended recall

Asking short, and specific questions. (Issue is they may not be asking the right questions)

Tended to ask questions in a predetermined or random order that was inconsistent with information that witness was providing at the time (ex. asking about voice while witness was describing clothing)

tented to ask questions that were "leading" or suggestive

Memory Conformity

When what one witness reports influences what another witness reports.

Misinformation effect / Post-event information effect

Phenomenon where a witness who is presented with innacurate information after an event will incorporate that misinformation into a subsequent recall task.

Explanations for the misinformation effect

Misinformation acceptance hypothesis, Source misattribution hypothesis, memory impairment hypothesis

Misinformation acceptance hypothesis

Where the incorrect information is provided because the witness guesses what the officer or experimenter wants the response to be

Source misattribution hypothesis

where the witness has two memories, the original and the misinformation; however, the witness cannot remember where each memory originated or the source of each

Memory impairment hypothesis

where the original memory is replaced with the new, incorrect info

Hypnotically Refreshed Memory

witness may be able to produce a greater number of details than a nonhypnotized witness.

two techniques used in hypnosis

Age regression (back in time to re-excperiece) and television technique (watching an imaginary television with events being played as they were witnessed)

Research on hypnosis witnesses

Under hypnosis will provide more details, but just as likely to be inaccurate as accurate

Better recall is done when closed eyes

Might be more suggestible to subtle cues by the interviewer

Cognitive Interview

Interview procedure for use with eyewitnesses based on principles of memory storage and retrieval

For eyewitnesses, not unwilling participants like suspects

Cognitive was better than standard and hypnosis

Stages of cognitive interview

Reinstating the Context

Report Everything

Reversing order

Changing perspective

Enhanced Cognitive Interview

Interview procedure that includes various principles of social dynamics in addition to the memory retrieval principles used in the original cognitive interview

1. Rapport building

2. Supportive Interviewer Behaviour

3. Transfer of Control (witness should control the flow)

4. Focused retrieval (open ended, then focused memory techniques

5. Witness-Compatioble Questioning

Suspect

A person the police thinks may have committed the crime, who may be guilty or innocent

Perpetrator

The guilty person who committed the crime.

Foils/Distractors

Lineup members who are known to be innocent of the crime in question

Fair Lineup

Where the suspect does not stand out from the other lineup members

Similarity-to-suspect strategy

matches lineup members to the suspect's appearance

difficulty is that there could be many factors to match. Could produce clones making it impossible to tell

Match-to-description

sets limits on number of features that need to be matched. Only there if having items witness provided in description

Target-present luneup

A lineup that contains the perp

Target-absent lineup

A lineup that does not contain the perp but rather an innocent suspect

Correct rejection

"The target is not present"

Foil identification

Identifying a foil

no harsh consequences

False identification

Witness can identify an innocent suspect

Could result in jailing an innocent

False positives are

false IDs and foil IDs

False Rejection

Failing to ID a perp. Resulting in guilty suspect going free

Photo array

police identification procedure similar to a lineup, except that photos of the suspect (who is not in custody) and others are shown to a witness or victim of a crime

Correct rejection rates did not differ across live and video-recorded lineups.

Simultaneous Lineup

A common lineup procedure that presents all lineup members at one time to the witness

Suggests it encourages the witness to make a relative judgment

Relative Judgment

Witness compares lineup members to one another and the person who looks most like the perp is IDd

Sequential Lineup

Alternative lineup procedure where the lineup members are presented serially to the witness, and the witness must make a decision as to whether the lineup member is the perpetrator before seeing another member. Also, a witness cannot ask to see previously seen photos and is unaware of the number of photos to be shown

Suggests that witness may be more likely to make an absolute judgement

Absolute Judgment

Witness compares each lineup member to their memory of the perpetrator to decide whether the lineup member is the perpetrator

Showup

Identification procedure that shows one person to the witness: the suspect

Will er on making a rejection over an ID.

Only acceptable times are if the witness might not be alive before the lineup, or if the suspect is apprehended immediately at or near the crime scene

Walk-by

Identification procedure that occurs in a naturalistic environment. The police take the witness to a public location where the suspect is likely to be. Once the suspect is in view, the witness is asked whether he or she sees the perpetrator.

Biased Lineups

A lineup that "suggests" whom the police suspect and thereby whom the witness should identify

Foil Bias, Clothing Bias, and Instruction Bias

Foil Bias

Only lineup member who matches the description of the perp

Clothing Bias

Only lineup member wearing clothing similar to that worn by the perp

Instruction Bias

Police fail to mention to the witness that the perp may not be present; rather the police imply that the perp is present and that the witness should pick them out

Voice ID

ID accuracy was higher with longer voice samples

Whispering significantly decreased ID accuracy

Distinctiveness interacted with whispering, influencing ID accuracy

Are several identifications better than one?

Yes

Correlation between confident and accurate witnesses is _____

small positive

Post ID feedback has an influence in real life situations and confidence assessments should be taken prior to any feedback

cue utilization hypothesis

Proposed by Easterbrook (1959) to explain why a witness may focus on the weapon rather than other details. The hypothesis suggests that when emotional arousal increases, attentional capacity decreases

Alternative explanation for weapon bias

Usualness

R. V. Mcintosh and McCarthy

Ruled not to permit expert testimony on eyewitness ID issues.

R. v. Henderson

Manitoba judge allowed a jury to hear the expert testimony on the limitations of eyewitness ID in a murder case

Myths about Child Witnesses and Victims

Young children will not remember what they witnessed

People do not "forget" child abuse

Child abuse is rare

Anatomically detailed dols are a good way of determining if a young child has been sexually abused

Children usually tell someone if they are being abused

The same types of lineup procedures that work for adults work for children (more likely to for incorrect ID)

the same types of interview procedures that work for adults will work for children

Fabricating

Making false claims

Research suggests that the accuracy of children's reporting is highly dependent on how they are asked to _____

report

Children racalling people

Hair mostfrequent among young and old kids, older kids more interior facial features like freckles and nose

exterior feature of hair seems to be a dominant descriptor by both children and adults, hair colour and style for 10-14 year olds

7-12 years inaccurate for height, weight, and age of unfamiliar visitor. Body descriptors consistently bad

Using free narrative approach, accuracy in kids is ____ with that of adults, buit children tend to report _____ information using a free narrative. Thus _____ questions are often necessary

comparable, very little, direct

Two proposed reasons for children being more suggestible

Social compliance, and cognitive developmental changes

Social Compliance

A proposed reason for children's suggestibility

They trust and want to cooperate with adult interviewers

Changes to the cognitive system

A proposed reason for children's suggestibility

differences in the ways chiidren encode, store, and retrieve memories.

Anatomically Detailed Dolls

A doll, sometimes like a rag doll, that is consistent with the male or female anatomy

Introduced when children are suspected of being sexually abused. Contradictory results about its effectiveness

Generally not encouraged, and suggested to not do that. And video if they do.

Human Figure Drawings (HFDs)

Used in theory to be better 2D than the 3D anatomical dolls. Research isn't convinced.

Criterion-Based Content Analysis (CBCA)

Analysis that uses criteria to distinguish truthful from false statements made by children

Part of a more comprehensive protocol called Statement validity analysis (SVA)

Highly subjective

Statement validity analysis (SVA)

A comprehensive protocol to distinguish truthful or false statements made by children containing three parts: (1) a structured interview of the child witness, (2) a systematic analysis of the verbal content of the child's statements (criterion-based content analysis), and (3) the application of the statement validity checklist.

Step-Wise Interview

Interview protocol with a series of "steps" designed to start the interview with the least leading type of questioning, and then proceed to more specific forms of questioning, as necessary

Narrative Elaboration

An interview procedure whereby children learn to organize their story into relevant categories: participants, settings, actions, conversation/affective states, and consequences.

practice telling stories, then asked free narrative using the cards, and then asked specific questions after

False Memory Syndrome

Term to describe clients' false beliefs that they were sexually abused as children, having no memories of this abuse until they enter therapy to deal with some other psychological problem, such as depression or substance abuse

5 Criteria to consider when determining the veracity of a recovered memory

Age of complainant at the time

Techniques used to recover memory

Similarity of reports across interview sessions

Motication for recall

Time elapsed since th alleged abuse

Historic Child Sexual Abuse

Allegations of child abuse having occurred several years, often decades, prior to when they are being prosecuted

93 percent of HCSA's before a jury resulted in guilty verdict

69 percent when it was judge alone

Mock jury had higher guilty ratings the shorter the delay

T/F Children are more likely to select an innocent person from a lineup than adults (false positives)

True

Elimination Lineup

Lineup Procedure for children that first asks them to pick out the person who looks most like the culprit from the photos displayed. Next, the children are asked whether the most similar person selected in in fact the culprit

ssignificantly decreased false positives

Competency inquiry

Questions posed to child witnesses under age 14 to determine whether they are able to communicate the evidence and understand the difference between the truth and a lie, and, in the circumstances of testifying, to see if they feel compelled to tell the truth

Bill C-2

Canada - Witnesses under age 14 must 1. be able to communicate the evidence and 2. understand the difference between the truth and a lie and feel compelled to tell the truth in court.

Courtroom accomodations for children

screens or in another room with CCTV to testify

Types of maltreatment

Physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect/faiiure to provide, and emotional maltreatment

In need of protection

A term used to describe a child's need to be separated from his or her caregiver because of maltreatment

Incidence

Number of new child maltreatment cases in a specific population occurring in a given time period, usually a year

prevalence

in the study of child abuse, the proportion of a population at a specific point in time that was maltreated during childhood

Risk factor

A factor that increases the likelihood for emotional or behavioural problems

Child factors, parental factors, and social factors