Eyewitness Psych - Final Exam (never finished)

week 8-13 (lecture 5,6,7,8,9)

what is indicia of reliability

Indicia of reliability refers to characteristics or clues that suggest (indicate) the credibility of a witness or the trustworthiness of their testimony in legal settings.

what 3 factors make up confidence?

1) meta-memory

• self monitoriing can affect behaviour.

  • e.g., when you study and think you know something well (make a judgement of your own memory), you move on to the next topic

2) judgement at retrieval

• confidence is specifically a judgement made at retrieval*

3) JoL (judgements of learning)

• a meta-memory judgement taken at encoding

• its a jdugement about learning

  • how well you think you’ve learned something and will remember it later (your confidence in your learning)

what 4 factors of indicia of reliability did we talk about in class?

1. confidence

2. accuracy of other details

3. speed of decision

4. decision strategy

how good of an indicia of reliability is confidence?

Confidence is a moderate indicia of reliability, as higher confidence often correlates with a greater belief in the accuracy of a testimony, but it does not guarantee the truthfulness of the information.

It is important to note tho that lay-people put a lot of stock in confidence

what do lay people think regarding: human memory working like a video camera? how did this differ from experts in the field?

lay-people:

• mostly agreed that human memory worked like a video camera

experts:

• strongly disagreed that human memory worked like a video camera

what do lay people think regarding: once you’ve formed a memory about an event, that memory does not change? how did this differ from experts in the field?

lay-people:

• mostly disagreed (but were highly unsure in their answers. wide range of answers for this with almost equal parts saying “mostly agree”)

experts:

• strongly disagreed

what do lay people think regarding: people generally notice when something unexpected enters their field of view, even when paying attention to something else? how did this differ from experts in the field?

lay-people:

• mostly agreed

experts:

• strongly disagreed

what do lay people think regarding: hypnosis is useful in helping witnesses accurately recall details of a crime? how did this differ from experts in the field?

lay-people:

• mostly agree

experts:

• strongly disagree

what do lay people think regarding: “IMO, the testimony of 1 confident eyewitness should be enough to convict someone of a crime”? how did this differ from experts in the field?

lay-people:

• mostly disagreed (however, there is some variablility in this answer. many still said strongly agreed or mostly agreed which is terrifying)

experts:

• strongly disagree

do lay people know how memory works?

not really. very limited but have many misunderstandings and misconceptions.

what are the 2 ways we make meta memory judgements?

1) experienced-based process

• our experience of how our own memory works

2) theory-based process

• our beleifs about memory or our beleifs of our own memory

how do we have a memory bias for situational factors affecting meta cognition?

we tend to not account for situation factors that affect our memories (like the passage of time or stress), but when asked about others and their memories, we would generally account for situational factors that would affect their memory

what was the prof’s dissertation on?

she looked at neutral and emotional (negative arousal emotion) pictures and how they affected locational memory tested through recall

• also indirectly looked at repeated testing and confidence

what was the experimental findings (relating to confidence) of the profs diseration experiment in experiment 1 (the one with the emjois in the squares)?

• overall people were more confident in the location of neutral pictures than emotional pictures

• if we looked at the confidence in correct/accurate judgements, people were more confident in neutral pics than emotional pics

• if we look at the confidence in inaccurate/incorrect judgements, they were more confident in the emtoional pictures

• when we looked at repeat errors, people were more confident in emotional over neutral accuracy

this means that people were more confident in their accuracy based on emotional stuff even when wrong. they were factually more accurate in neutral items, but were more confident in their performance relating to emotional items.

what was the experimental findings (relating to confidence) of the profs diseration experiment in experiment 2 (the one based on test feedback)?

• when given feedback on their accuracy, their confidence became more calibrated - causing their confidence to be more appropritate and conneced to their accuracy

confidence for our accuracy in emotional items doesn’t come from ____________

the accuracy itself (as demosntrated in prof’s experiment for dissertation)

what is the hypercorrection effect relating to confidence and accuracy?

• when the item was they got wrong was a neutral item but they were very confident, they took the feedback given to heart. then they hypercorrected for it

• however if they got an emotional item wrong and were very confident about it, they didn’t impliment the feedback and hypercorrect for their mistakes.

this means that the confidence can still muddy their memory and override memory/logic

is a confident eyewitness an accurate eyewitness?

Not necessarily, as high confidence does not always correlate with correct recall.

*our confidence in neutral information ____________

our confidence in emotional information ______________

does NOT hinder accuracy rates;

does sometimes get in the way and affect accuracy rates

would you expect items presented one or twice to have higher JoLs

twice. you should have a higher judgement of your own learning (confidence in remembering it) if shown it twice.

what is the influence of emotional items (opposed to neutral items) on hits, misses, FAs, and correct rejections.

in hits, misses, and correct rejections, both neutral and emotional items have similar accuracy rates. However, false alarms happpen significantly more often in emotional items

not only this, but even when we FA more often with the emotional items, were are MORE CONFIDENT in the accuracy of the emotional items (even though we get them wrong and FA more often)

how does the activiation of the posterior parahyppocampus vs amygdala affect confidence and memory?

• more posterior parahippocampus activation in neutral information

• more amygdala activation in emotional information

  • but also more amygdala activation affects the confidence judgement.

• with neutral information, our metamemory consults posterior parahippocampus (meaning we think more logically and try to remember the content itself)

• with emotional information, our metamemory consults the amygdala which bases memory off of feelings. it can lead us to feel very confident due to how strong the emotions may feel, but this doesn’t necessarily mean its more accurate (as this is the posterior parahippocampus’ job).

what is the potimality hypothesis for the confidence-accuracy relationship?

• suggest that if witnessing conditoins are poor. the C-A relationship will be weak → meaning confidence will not predict accuracy

• suggests that if the witnessing conditions are good, the C-A relationship will be strong → meaning confidence will predict accuracy

what is the self-percpetion theory of the confidence-accuracy relationship?

Self-perception theory posits that individuals form their confidence in memory based on their own behavior and experiences. This means that their perceived accuracy can be influenced by how they interpret their own responses and the consistency of their memories.

e.g.

i didn’t know i like onions until i noticed i kept eating sauces and foods voluntarily with onions on them. i was not confident in my like of onions until after I made such choices → an eyewitness may not be confident in their identification until after they made that choice

• this solidifies our choices. “why would i pick someone if i wasn’t sure. therefore, i must be sure, it was them!”