Field Studies of Eyewnitess Memory of Actual Crimes

What I enjoyed about this article most was the actual case narratives. These provided vivid imagery of what could perhaps best be described as similar to an episode of “Cops.” Additionally, this study examined witness memory for events that actually occurred, not simply a field study in which the procedures of the laboratory are simply transferred to more public contexts. Thus, it provides the field of eyewitness identification research a very useful examination of what aspects of actual eyewitness accounts are accurate over time and also what aspects are wrought with error. Further, they found some interesting errors made in terms of colors for clothing and, perhaps most importantly, the false identifications made by about half of the witnesses when shown target absent and target present lineups using the face of the perpetrator of the actual crime. This really did not surprise me, because, despite the fact that most eyewitness research studies are conducted in either lab or field settings, but with participants, human memory can be poor in a variety of situations, and these findings allow us the evidence to know that memory for certain aspects of actual crimes is not that great.
The issue here is not necessarily about how surprised we are from these findings because it is generally assumed that memory will have its downfalls for certain situations. The issue relates to what we can conclude and interpret from results of research findings. With experiments such as those conducted in the current article, ecological validity is high. The actual circumstances of how such events occur in the world, outside of the research laboratory, provide us with a relative amount of confidence about these results. It basically comes down to the, “who cares” argument. People might look at research findings from laboratory studies and wonder how those results apply to the real world, or if it would occur outside of the carefully controlled, artificial environment created for laboratory studies. It is important to consider the ecological validity of research, but practical limitations in terms of time and resources drive researchers into the lab to conduct studies, and then, if there is sufficient justification to extend this study to the field, they will attempt to get funding and conduct the study in the field to see if they get the same results as they did in the lab. Research involving actual cases goes one step further and is quite timely and costly, but also requires the necessary condition of cooperation of authorities and witnesses who were involved in the actual crime. It is important to keep doing both lab, field, and research from actual cases, and to note the implications that can be derived from the results of each type of research.
DJP

There are many differences between laboratory and “real word” witness. It seems that many of the studies done have been based on the results of laboratory witnesses due to ease/convenience. But I think it was a good idea to focus on witnesses who have witnessed an actual crime. For the studies talked about in this chapter, witness cooperation was needed. This is not always easy to obtain as many witnesses may not want to recreate memories related to the event in order to retrieve details for the research. One of the reasons why using this witnesses is difficult is because no one actually knows what truly happened unless there is sufficient DNA evidence or some other prominent type of evidence. The study in this paper found that verbal reports can be accurate, and this accuracy can be maintained for 4-6months. This was surprising to me as I thought accuracy would go down after a shorter period of time. It was fascinating to learn that the height of the suspect, weight, age estimate, and color of hair and clothes were the least accurate information provided! Those things seemed to me to be characteristics that would have been more accurate. The study also found that stress may not have that vast of impact on a witness’s accuracy. I also found it interesting that the study discovered that suggestibility may have less of an influence in the intensely remembered real world situations. It was also found that violent events were more accurately remembered than the non-violent events were.
After reading this, I found myself to be happy that there is eyewitness research being done. I believe it can help us to understand how the brain works and the nature of memory. This can be helpful in understanding how better to collect information from eyewitnesses.

S.D.