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Eyewitness Testimony (eyewitness + testimony)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	20%

Selected Abstracts

Eyewitness testimony and perceived credibility of youth with mild intellectual disability

JOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 7 2004
M. Peled
Abstract Background Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) are more vulnerable to abuse compared to individuals without disabilities yet have limited access to the legal system. This study examined perceived credibility of youth with mild intellectual disability (MID) who provide courtroom testimony. Method Participants, 187 undergraduates, were asked general questions about credibility. They also read eyewitness testimony and answered questions about a particular witness's credibility. Half the participants were informed that the youth has MID [chronological age (CA) 15 years, mental age (MA) 10 years] and the others were informed that the youth is a typically developing 10-year-old. Results When participants were asked general questions about credibility they rated 15-year-olds with MID (MA 10 years) as less credible than typically developing 15-year-olds and as less credible than typically developing 10-year-olds. However, when participants read eyewitness testimony and answered questions about a particular witness's credibility, no statistically significant differences were found between participants who were informed that the witness was a 15-year-old with MID (MA 10 years) and those who were informed that the witness was a typically developing 10-year-old. Conclusions The present study provided a preliminary investigation of perceived credibility of witnesses with MID and suggests directions for future research in this area. [source]

Unspeakable Pasts as Limit Events: The Holocaust, Genocide, and the Stolen Generations

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 2 2003
Simone Gigliotti
This article examines the role of testimony in the production of the memory of the Holocaust and the practice of forcible removals in Australia as "limit events". A "limit event" is an event or practice of such magnitude and profound violence that its effects rupture the otherwise normative foundations of legitimacy and so-called civilising tendencies that underlie the constitution of political and moral community. The references are the stories of removal collated in Bringing Them Home, and eyewitness testimonies from the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. By situating the stolen generations and the Eichmann trial as limit events, I argue that the effects of witnessing and story-telling exposed a cultural semantics of what was speakable and unspeakable in the narratives of judging historical injustice and remembering past traumas. [source]

INJUSTICE AND IRRATIONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY YOUTH POLICY

CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 4 2004
DONNA M. BISHOP
Lionel Tate was 12 years old when he killed 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. Tiffany had been staying at the Tate home and, by all accounts, got along well with Lionel. The two were playing at "wrestling" when Lionel decided to try out some moves that he had seen on television. He threw Tiffany across the room, inflicting fatal injuries. Despite the boy's tender age, the prosecutor transferred Lionel to criminal court on a charge of first-degree murder, an offense carrying a mandatory penalty of life without parole. The boy was given an opportunity to plead guilty to second-degree murder in return for a sentence of three years incarceration, but he rejected the offer. A jury subsequently convicted him of first-degree murder. At sentencing, the prosecution recommended leniency, which drew an angry response from the judge: If the state believed the boy did not deserve to be sent to prison for life, why hadn't it charged him with a lesser offense? Without any inquiry into the boy's cognitive, emotional, or moral maturity, the judge imposed the mandatory sentence.1 Raymond Gardner was 16 years old when he shot and killed 20-year-old Mack Robinson.2 Raymond lived in a violent urban neighborhood with his mother, who kept close watch over him. He had no prior record. He was an A student and worked part-time in a clothing store to earn money for college. On the day of the shooting, a friend came into the store to tell Raymond that Mack had a beef with him about talking to a girl, and was "looking to get him." The victim was known on the street as "Mack the Knife" because he always carried a small machete and was believed to have stabbed several people. To protect himself on the way home, Raymond took the gun kept under the counter of the shop where he worked. As he neared home, Mack and two other men approached and blocked his path. According to eyewitness testimony, Raymond began shaking, then pulled out the gun and fired. Mack ran into the street and fell. Raymond followed and fired five more shots into the victim's back as he lay dying on the ground. Raymond did not run. He just stood there crying. The prosecutor filed a motion in juvenile court to transfer Raymond on a charge of first-degree murder. The judge ordered a psychological evaluation, which addressed the boy's family and social background, medical and behavioral history, intelligence, maturity, potential for future violence and prospects for treatment. The judge subsequently denied the transfer motion. He found Raymond delinquent and committed him to a private psychiatric treatment facility.3 [source]

Eyewitness Memory and Eyewitness Identification Performance in Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

JOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, Issue 6 2008
Marguerite Ternes
Background, Since individuals with intellectual disabilities are often the only witnesses to alleged crimes, it is important to know their capacity to provide eyewitness testimony. Methods, Twenty-two participants with intellectual disabilities and 23 comparison group participants had their photographs taken by a confederate. One to two weeks following the photography session, participants were interviewed about the event and were asked to identify the photographer. Two misleading questions, to test for suggestibility, were asked at the end of the interview. Results, Comparison group participants performed significantly better than participants with intellectual disabilities with a target-present lineup, but no significant differences were found between participant groups with a target-absent lineup. Comparison group participants performed significantly better than chance with the target-absent lineup, but participants with intellectual disabilities did not. In the interview, participants with intellectual disabilities provided significantly fewer details than comparison group participants, and the details provided by both groups were mainly accurate. Participants with intellectual disabilities were significantly more likely to acquiesce to one of the suggestive questions than comparison group participants, but the two participant groups did not differ in likelihood of acquiescence for the other suggestive question. Conclusions, It seems that individuals with intellectual disabilities may make adequate witnesses if they are interviewed in a non-leading manner. Future research should examine methods to improve their eyewitness identification performance. [source]

Eyewitness testimony and perceived credibility of youth with mild intellectual disability

Can fabricated evidence induce false eyewitness testimony?

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2010
Kimberley A. Wade
False information can influence people's beliefs and memories. But can fabricated evidence induce individuals to accuse another person of doing something they never did? We examined whether exposure to a fabricated video could produce false eyewitness testimony. Subjects completed a gambling task alongside a confederate subject, and later we falsely told subjects that their partner had cheated on the task. Some subjects viewed a digitally manipulated video of their partner cheating; some were told that video evidence of the cheating exists; and others were not told anything about video evidence. Subjects were asked to sign a statement confirming that they witnessed the incident and that their corroboration could be used in disciplinary action against the accused. See-video subjects were three times more likely to sign the statement than Told-video and Control subjects. Fabricated evidence may, indeed, produce false eyewitness testimony; we discuss probable cognitive mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Beliefs about factors affecting the Reliability of eyewitness testimony: A Comparison of judges, jurors and the general public

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2010
Svein Magnussen
We surveyed 164 members of the juror pool of the Court of Appeal and a representative sample of 1000 adult Norwegians without juror experience, about their knowledge and beliefs about eyewitness testimony, and compared their answers to a prior survey of Norwegian judges. Although the judges were somewhat more knowledgeable than jurors and the general public, all groups had limited knowledge of eyewitness testimony. Juror experience, in terms of number of times serving as juror, did not correlate with eyewitness knowledge. Consistent with this finding, the knowledge scores of the jurors were similar to the scores of the general public, tested with an abridged seven-item version of the questionnaire. Comparisons with the results of surveys conducted in the US, indicate similar levels of knowledge among law professionals and jurors in the two countries. Increasing the knowledge of eyewitness testimony among the principal participants in the judiciary system may be an important component of the solution to eyewitness error. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

What US prosecutors and defence attorneys know and believe about eyewitness testimony

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 9 2009
Richard A. Wise
The present study compared what prosecutors and defence attorneys know about eyewitness testimony, what they believe jurors know about eyewitness testimony, and what legal safeguards they think are necessary to educate jurors about eyewitness factors. A total of 73 prosecutors and 1184 defence attorneys completed a survey about eyewitness testimony. Both groups of attorneys had extensive experience practicing law and trying criminal cases. Prosecutors were significantly less knowledgeable than the defence attorneys on almost every issue including the weak relationship between eyewitness confidence and accuracy at trial, jurors' inability to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses and the benefits of sequential lineups. The prosecutors were less willing than the defence attorneys to permit eyewitness expert testimony and were less sceptical of jurors' knowledge of eyewitness testimony. We highlight issues from the survey that are relevant to the training of prosecutors and defence attorneys about eyewitness testimony. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Lessons from the origins of eyewitness testimony research in Europe

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2008
Siegfried Ludwig Sporer
After 100 years of research I look back at the beginnings of the psychology of eyewitness testimony to assess the ,progress' researchers have made. Specifically, I review the origins of (experimental) psychological research at the first three decades of the 20th century in Central Europe which quickly expanded around the world. Both eyewitness errors (e.g. due to suggestive questioning) as well as intentional distortions of the truth (lies) were thoroughly studied at that time. An eyewitness statement was considered a joint product of cognitive factors and of interrogation. It is argued that many of the central issues that are at the focus of study today had already been addressed in this early period, perhaps even with a broader scope than much contemporary writing. At the end, I propose an integrative model of the psychology of testimony that may help to organise past and future research. Ten theses that address unresolved issues and suggestions for solutions after 100 years of research are outlined. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Interviewer feedback in repeated interviews involving forced confabulation

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2007
Jessica M. Hanba
The effects of confirmatory interviewer feedback on eyewitness testimony following forcibly confabulated and accurate responses to repeated interview questions were investigated in two experiments. The first experiment showed that, relative to neutral feedback, confirmatory feedback provided after a forcibly confabulated response greatly increased the likelihood that participants would provide the same confabulated response when re-interviewed 2 days later, led participants to report these repeated confabulations with greater speed and fewer expressions of doubt, and increased the prevalence of false memories. Confirmatory interviewer feedback provided following accurate responses appeared to have more modest consequences for consistency and confidence, but ceiling effects provided little opportunity for observing potential effects. A second experiment showed that these effects of confirmatory feedback are of considerable practical significance, in that, regardless of their accuracy, responses that had earlier been reinforced with confirmatory feedback were much more likely to be judged by others as credible. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Do differences in event descriptions cause differences in duration estimates?

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2002
Alice C. I. Pedersen
The relationship between the way in which people describe an event and people's estimates of the duration of the event is investigated in three studies. People are told to use different writing styles designed to produce different characteristics. For example, a ,tabloid' condition was designed to produce words with higher implied action. Across all three studies, differences among the event descriptions only produced small differences in the duration estimates. These results question the direct causal relation between language use and duration estimates. We discuss these findings in relation to memory reconstruction and eyewitness testimony. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Five years later: children's memory for medical emergencies

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2001
Carole Peterson
Children who had been 2,13 years of age at the time of a medical emergency (an injury serious enough to require hospital ER treatment) were re-interviewed about their injury and treatment five years after injury, and three years after a previous interview. The children showed excellent recall of the central components of their injury experience, although their recall of hospital treatment was more incomplete. Thus, both the nature of the event being recalled (the injury versus the hospital treatment) and the centrality of information (central versus peripheral) were important. The recall of 2-year-olds, although not as good as that of children just a year older, did not fit with predictions of infantile amnesia since they recalled a considerable amount about their injury. High stress levels at the time of the target experiences had little effect on the highly memorable injury event, but seemed to facilitate children's recall of central components of the hospital event,the event that they had a harder time remembering. Implications for eyewitness testimony are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]