Eyewitness testimony - Grade: A PDF

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Eyewitness Testimony's

Kaylie R. Baker Grand Canyon University PSY-102: General Psychology Dr. Chesniak October 18, 2020

2 How reliable is a person's memory? The peer-reviewed articles Can fabricated evidence induce false eyewitness testimony? Written by Kimberly Wade (2010) and Ignoring memory hints: The stubborn influence of environmental cues on recognition memory written by Diana Selmeczy (2017) dive into how things may affect how human beings recollect past events. These articles make valid points that the human ability to recollect memories can be influenced and cause false information by explaining how environmental cues could influence people's confidence in how keen their judgments are, just as proposing subjective questions and fabricated evidence would have eyewitnesses question their memory of an incident. The article Can fabricated evidence induct false eyewitness testimony? Written by Kimberly Wade (2010) explains how tampered evidence, when presented to eyewitness, could cause false testimonies. They conducted a series of experiments where their subjects were exposed to a fabricated video to see if it would affect their ability to recall what happened and accuse the wrong person, causing the false eyewitness testimony. Subjects played a part in a gambling game, where their gambling partner (the Confederate) was in on the experiment, later, they falsely told subjects that their partner cheated during the game. Some subjects viewed a digitally altered video of their partner cheating. Others were told that video evidence of the cheating exists, but were not shown the video, and the rest were not told about video evidence at all. “Four of the 12 subjects who signed the witness statement (three See-video; one Told-video) wrote down additional incriminating details or described incriminating details to Confederate” (Wade 2010). Some statements that subjects said suggested that they were unaware of the real reason for the experiment and truly thought that it was investigating gambling behavior. “Only one subject indicated suspicion about the experiment in her conversation with

3 Confederate B ('this isn't part of the experiment, is it?'); this subject was removed from analyses and replaced” (Wade 2010). Scientists have argued that false suggestions could induct people to testify about events they never witnessed (Loftus, [15]). At the end of the experiment, research on suggestion, such as fabricated evidence, reveals that people can have distorted memories about their experiences and make false recollections. Ignoring memory hints: The stubborn influence of environmental cues on recognition memory written by Diana Selmeczy (2017) dives into the use of environmental cues. Explaining that signal of environmental cues can promote the likelihood of encountering familiar stimuli rather than unfamiliar stimuli. They conduct a series of three similar experiments, Experiment 1 subjects were instructed to use or ignored environmental cues that were presented to them beforehand to their recognition. To maintain reliable results, Experiment one showed that subjects could “only dampen but not fully eliminate the influence of environmental cues”(Selmeczy 2017). They then looked into if the subjects could sufficiently disregard the influence of cues when given after the recognition exam. In experiment, two subjects were provided with “monetary incentives” (Selmeczy 2017) to ignore cues in experiment three. The results revealed that while subjects were able to reduce the influence of cues on their memory, they were never able to fully exclude their influence from their remembrance judgments. In conclusion, eyewitness testimony is not very reliable when trying to recollect information in serious events. Owing to people relying on their memory and the little evidence given to them, can cause a false accusation to a certain study. For example, a bystander watching someone robs a convent store can be mislead to recollect false memories if fabricated evidence or suggestive questions are given to them. Eyewitnesses tell their point of view of the story but

4 the amount of detail all depends on where the person was during this situation, different peripheral views can alter or cause different images of what happened. Article one showed that when eyewitnesses are given false evidence or told suggestive terms, they are more likely to change the way they remember a situation happening because the evidence was familiarized to the person in question. scientists have argued that false suggestions could induct people to testify about events they never witnessed (Loftus, [15]). In article two, the idea that the environment around a witness can influence the way they are able to recollect the incident. “Recognition judgments can benefit from the use of environmental cues that signal the general likelihood of encountering familiar versus unfamiliar stimuli. While incorporating such cues is often adaptive, there are circumstances” (Selmeczy 2017). The way the environment can cause the witness to recollect things that didn’t happen or remember them in an altered way is very vital to investigations. Conclusively, when looking into how reliable someone's memory is, the information given leads one to think that everything is subjective to how well someone can recollect their memory. A witness can be influenced in many ways, the easiest ways are from false evidence, subjective questions and how they perceived the environment around them. These things are found to play large roles in the process of recovering memory and recognizing what was going on around them. The articles Can fabricated evidence induct false eyewitness testimony? Written by Kimberly Wade (2010) and Ignoring memory hints: The stubborn influence of environmental cues on recognition memory Written by Diana Selmeczy (2017) effectively portray the importance of the influences on the brain's memory and how it can badly reflect on the subjects when falsely accusing someone of a crime not committed.

5 References Loftus, E. F. (1970, January 1). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory. http:// learnmem.cshlp.org/content/12/4/361.full. Selmeczy, D., & Dobbins, I. G. (2017). Ignoring memory hints: The stubborn influence of environmental cues on recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(9), 1448–1469. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/ 10.1037/xlm0000383.supp (Supplemental) Wade, K. A., Green, S. L., & Nash, R. A. (2010). Can fabricated evidence induce false eyewitness testimony? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(7), 899–908. https://doiorg.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/acp.1607...