Part 1 Eyewitness Recollection
In many trials, at least one factor that is considered is the testimony of eyewitnesses. And in trials where additional evidence is minimal, the testimony of the eyewitness(es) may end up carrying a lot of weight. This week, you will be exploring the reliability and impact of these testimonies. Before participating in this week’s discussion, make sure to read Chapter 5 in your textbook and watch the following 3 videos:
Are you a good eyewitness? Put yourself to the test! (Click on Link to Open Video)
Embedded Video Player: Test Your Awareness
Embedded Video Player: The Monkey Business Illusion
Discuss the following points:
How did you do with each of the 3 videos? What details did you get right? What details or changes did you miss?
How do attention issues like this impact the reliability of eyewitness testimony?
Besides change blindness and inattention, what other factors can impact the reliability of eyewitness testimony?
After reading about the psychological issues related to being a victim in chapter 6 of your text, how do you believe these psychological consequences could impact the reliability of their eyewitness testimony? Support your perspective with information from the text or other research.
What steps can be taken to increase the reliability of eyewitness testimony?
PART 2 respond to two peers
Peer 1 Hello everyone, How did you do with each of the 3 videos? What details did you get right? What details or changes did you miss? In the first video, the news anchors were all trying to say something all at once and I was focused on sound for some reason, and then I watched it a second time and noticed the different pants and how many women they pointed out, and I also began to notice other details like hair color and style and shapes of faces (12 News, 2019). In the second video, I was able to accurately count the thirteen passes that occurred between the white hoodie team, but I was so focused on the movement of the white hoodies that I did not see the moon walking bear until I watched a second time (Do the Test, 2008). In the third video, I seen the bear and the person in black leaving, but I did not notice the curtain changing color only that the picture appeared brighter (Simons, 2010). How do attention issues like this impact the reliability of eyewitness testimony? Depending on what has a person’s attention during an event directly affects what a person perceives is actually happening, even being in the room where it is occurring wouldn’t mean much if your focus was on other things going on around you, or the things that may be going on inside your own mind could be a distraction because those can be loud spaces too depending on life and circumstances. Reliability depends on what the eyewitness is paying attention to and how accurately they can give an account of the events they witnessed. Besides change blindness and inattention, what other factors can impact the reliability of eyewitness testimony? Selective attention is something that humans do because we cannot process all the information around ourselves in situations of elevated stimulation, we unconsciously select what information we take in (Heilbrun et el., 2024). This also causes some people to only focus on specific things in an unfolding situation, like the criminal’s gun in a robbery instead of focusing on facial features to be able to identify the suspect later (Heilbrun et el., 2024). Another factor is how well we retain the information we have taken in because humans have fast memory loss of events, and the retention time between the event occurring and being able to give those details to the investigators can affect the details that are remembered (Heilbrun et el., 2024). Forming memories begins with encoding the information and then storing it until we retrieve the information, and if anything goes wonky with any part of those processes it will affect the memory being brought forth from an eyewitness in identification (Heilbrun et el., 2024). Another interesting thing is post-event information which occurs during the storage phase of memory when witnesses begin talking with each other and giving details which sparks connections in the events that may also involve adding in details that were not present at all, showing an alteration in the memory (Heilbrun et el., 2024). After reading about the psychological issues related to being a victim in chapter 6 of your text, how do you believe these psychological consequences could impact the reliability of their eyewitness testimony? Support your perspective with information from the text or other research. The study of victimology focuses on the process and consequences of a person experiencing being the victim of a violent crime and how one must seek therapy and help for several problems that may occur after the event like posttraumatic stress disorder or acute stress disorder (Heilbrun et el., 2024). Post traumatic stress disorder is characterized by reexperiencing the event through intrusive thoughts, nightmares, or flashbacks of the event, avoidance of trauma-related thoughts, feelings or anything of the outside world that reminds the person of the event, a negative disposition and expectancy of bad things, being easily upset and reactive, and lastly characterized by social and occupational inabilities to perform tasks or maintain relationships (Heilbrun et el., 2024). Acute stress disorder is still a trauma related disorder, but it is a bit milder than PTSD (Heilbrun et el., 2024). It is believed that if a person experiences a traumatic event, they have support from family and friends, they may not develop PTSD because support helps people (Heilbrun et el., 2024). These disorders can affect a person’s ability to remember events accurately or cause a suspect to be misidentified in a lineup of possibilities depending on what the person’s brain is focusing on at the time of the crime (Heilbrun et el., 2024). That does not mean that people are not sure about who they are choosing at the time of the lineup because when someone has been raped or brutally victimized, they are still processing the experience and emotional decisions and mistakes can be made. I do not believe that anyone would really want to put the wrong person behind bars, but if conditions are right and perceptions are skewed details about how tall the suspect might have been or features may cause the wrong person to be accused (Heilbrun et el., 2024). What steps can be taken to increase the reliability of eyewitness testimony? We want to be positive that we are catching the right criminals and minimizing misidentification during the process of identification. Police are implementing techniques from psychologists and researchers for interviewing eyewitnesses and how they present the lineups (Heilbrun et el., 2024). To improve the diagnosticity of identification psychologists have implemented a cognitive interview to assess the concepts of memory retrieval and social communication by reinstating the context when the witness encoded the information to provide retrieval cues to increase the accessibility of the information that is stored in a victim’s memory (Heilbrun et el., 2024). As the interviewer directs the witness, they suggest the person to form an image of the event, recollect sights, sounds, smells, and the conditions of the environment around them at the time of the crime, and the emotional reactions experienced (Heilbrun et el., 2024). When the victim is preparing to identify an assailant, they must be told that the perpetrator may not even be present at that point in time to avoid them feeling pressured into identifying a person prematurely and reduces the risk of misidentification from 70 % down to 43% (Heilbrun et el., 2024). Officers being patient and not pushing or pressuring a witness for a quick identification by dropping comments to the victim that makes them feel rushed (Heilbrun et el
peer2 Good afternoon everyone,
Looking at all three of the videos I did not do as well as I hoped. In the first one with the group, I did terribly, I old focused on the 6 people in the front and did not notice the back two. The second one with the bear, I had seen this video before so I knew that it would come up at some point but I still ended up missing it when it first showed up because I was trying to count the passes. In the third video, I was a bit more prepared and more observant. I caught a lot more things, such as the monkey and the curtains changing. I did not notice that a member left. There was a lot going on in each video and It really shows how difficult it can be to provide a 100% accurate memory of an event. Unless you have a photogenic memory that you can recall every little detail, it is nearly impossible. The mind tends to recall even less when placed in a fight-or-flight situation. This is not very strong evidence to completely base any definite ruling on.
Reading our book further affirmed my thoughts stance on the accuracy and reliability of eyewitnesses. Yes, many have gotten people behind bars who have done horrible things and deserved their sentence, but there are plenty more who wrong-convicted innocent people. Say the victims who either did not see the suspect well enough and accidentally got the wrong person convicted, or completely lied to get the wrong person behind bars on purpose. Eyewitness errors are the leading cause of wrongful convictions, particularly in sexual assaults and robberies (Heilbrun et al., 2024). There are way too many cases that took place 20 or more years ago when tools were less evolved that recently were relooked into just to find that the data and evidence pointed to a different person.
What I believe would greatly help eyewitness statements be more trustworthy would be to have the victim and as many people as possible give their statements as early as possible. Unfortunately, this will probably be very uncomfortable for them, but the fresher the memory is in their mind the more detail is retained. Just like when you remember a dream right after you wake up but if you wait a few hours after to tell anyone about it, a lot of the detail is forgotten. Also having them take them to a psychologist or therapist to help them work through the event and remember any more details that could be important.
W/C: 444
References:
Heilbrun, K, Greene, E, & Bradfield Douglas, A. (2024). Wrightsman’s Psychology and the Legal System (10th ed.). Cengage.
