The Self-Administered Interview (SAI) is a revolutionary investigative tool developed by a small team consisting of 'Dr Fiona Gabbert (Abertay University, Scotland), Dr Lorraine Hope (Portsmouth University, England) and Professor Ron Fisher (Florida International University, USA)' (“The SAI”, n.d.). The SAI has been developed to preserve and protect the memories of eye witnesses to incidents or critical events. Eyewitness accounts are critical to police investigations and may play a key role in the conviction of a potential criminal. Inaccurate eyewitness accounts are said to be the cause of many false imprisonments, which is why it is so crucial that we protect the memory of a witness. If a case goes to trial “one can reasonably assume that …show more content…
The SAI has been developed to counter this and “has been scientifically proven to preserve and protect eyewitness memory by eliciting a detailed recall account at the scene of an incident or soon after” (“The SAI”, n.d.). Many tests have been conducted to measure the efficacy of the SAI tool, in many situations it is evident that the SAI can be a very effective …show more content…
In this particular study, mock witnesses watch a recorded 'critical event' and are then required to attempt to recall these event in as much detail as possible, the witnesses had been split into three groups. The results from the studies show that those who completed the SAI and the CI were able to provide witness accounts that were significantly more accurate than those who completed an FR, although there was not a great difference in accuracy between accounts form the witnesses that completed the SAI and the CI. However, these are still very promising results for the SAI as a whole, the distinguishing factor between the SAI and the CI is that the CI time consuming, and often police do not have the time or resources to conduct a one immediately after an indecent, this is why the SAI is proving to be such an effective tool. The second test focused on determining the effectiveness of the SAI at preserving and protecting the memory of witnesses. This test was conducted much like the first. Mock witnesses watched a recorded critical event, afterwards the 'control group' was sent home to be called back after a weeks delay, the other group completed an SAI booklet, and were also
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
For this book report, I decided to read Hugo Münsterberg's On the Witness Stand. This book contains essays on psychology and crime and eyewitness testimony. Today this book is used as a reference for many issues in forensic psychology. For this report, I focused on two chapters of the book: Illusions and the Memory of the Witness. I am going to first summarize the two chapters I read then talk about what was going on at the time this book was written. I will then report some of the research in the book, and finish with my opinion on how this book has contributed to the literature and how it relates to the current knowledge of forensic psychology.
Memory plays a large role in our legal system. A person who witnesses a crime has to rely on recalling information, which isn’t always completely accurate. In Johnson (1993) paper she discusses ways memory interferes with the legal systems and what rules and regulations help prevent memory failure to interfere.
...igations today has a huge impact on false confessions. The Reid Technique is being criticized in the media because of its guilt-presumptive, aggressive, and psychologically manipulative nature. It is based on a series of assumptions that lack scientific support, and by using it they are creating hostile and coercive environment for the interrogation. The fact that they try to pass these confessions off as voluntary should also be an issue against using them since we know they are usually coerced. There are two alternatives to the Reid technique being used to interview suspects. These do not use coercion and manipulation to get confessions. The first is the PEACE Model, which is an interview technique that is more ethical, and the other technique is Cognitive interviewing which is used by police as a memory technique used to enhance the retrieval of their memory.
Wells, G. L., & Bradfield, A. L. (1998). “Good, you identified the suspect”: Feedback to eyewitness distorts their reports of the eyewitness experience. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(3), 360-376.
In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.
In this paper, I will look at what can go wrong in eyewitness identification. We will discuss if eyewitness identification can be considered valid evidence for convicting individuals of a crime. And what precautions can be put into place to protect individuals from wrongful conviction and help make the process more trustworthy.
Although testimony by witnesses is an invaluable tool in assisting judges and juries’ efforts to convict violent criminals, however, there are major issues with witness memory and recall of events. For this reason, officers of the court use the professional psychological research to deal with the likelihood of significant errors in eyewitness testimony. The fact is, human memory begins to fade within the first hour. In addition, memory continues to decrease for the next nine hours and beyond. Furthermore, recall of a crime can be affected by other factors. As a consequence of major mistakes in observer evidence many innocent victims spend years in prison before they are vindicated and
To our knowledge, eyewitness memory could be simply defined as a person’s episodic memory that he or she has been a witness of a certain criminal event. However, psychologists have discovered that the confidence of memory recall of eyewitness, would increase significantly by asking them the simple question, (e.g., Do you see the perpetrator below the following pictures?), even though the feedback
The term that best explains the barriers to eyewitness memory is widely regarded as verbal overshadowing. The notion of verbal overshadowing has been coined as the inability to provide explicit memories due to the cognitive barriers people possess to depict accurately the events that have transpired. On a daily basis, individuals across the United States are sentenced to lengthy prison sentences resultant of wrongful convictions (Innocence Project, 2016). To illustrate the ambivalences caused by verbal overshadowing, if it even exists, behavioral scientists conducted a study to demonstrate the disparities. Many researchers have designed an experiment to measure a person’s cognitive ability to remember accurately a perpetrator that has committed a crime in a police lineup (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler,
The manner in which memories are constructed lends itself to errors. According to the constructive approach to memory, what people remember is not only based on what actually happened, but also include other factors such as previous knowledge, experiences, and expectations (Goldstein, 2011, p. 249). This is troubling due to the fact that eyewitness testimony is the foundation of most criminal trials. The case of Mark Diaz Bravo is an example of how false testimony can not only destroy an individual’s life, but how eyewitness error can lead to the wrongfully convicted being falsely imprisoned. Mr. Bravo was accused of raping a psychiatric patie...
Loftus’s work and the studies that followed have demonstrated that an individual’s memory of an event can easily be distorted by post-event information, which is provided through questions that the researcher or police officer in case of a real life crime might ask the witness. But not only researchers’ questions have been found to distort memory. Several studies have indicated that when witnesses discuss an event together they can mistakenly incorporate elements of each other’s memories into their own memories (e.g., Gabbert, Memon, & Allan, 2003; Paterson & Kemp, 2006). ...
The novel Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial goes into great detail about the encounters an expert witness, on memory especially, might come across by telling true stories from Dr. Elizabeth Loftus’s experiences with the help of Katherine Ketcham. It also provides information about Loftus’s work and research on memory and its limitations and malleability (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991). Applying research on memory to this novel allows one to better understand the implications of the prosecutor’s case more effectively. The first story told in Witness for the Defense is the one involving Steve Titus.
distraction during retrieval affects the quality, not the quantity, of eyewitness recall. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26(2), 296-300.
From a legal standpoint, eyewitness memories are not accurate. Though they all illustrate the same concept, each paper described different ways eyewitness memories were altered. One’s memory can be misleading by their own attributions towards the situation, what they choose to see and not see, and if the individual has been through a single event or repetitive stressful events. As human beings, our memories on all matters are not concrete. When retelling stories, we tend to modify the situation and tailor certain events, making the information provided unreliable. An eyewitness testimony changes the track of a trial and information that is given to the court can be ambiguous and can cause bias towards the circumstances. Eyewitnesses can even be confident in their retelling of a situation and explain a complete event, when in fact, that particular event never