Eyewitness Memory

The chapter begins by talking about the case of Ronald Cotton, where Ron was accused of raping Jennifer Cannino, and was sent to prison for 11 years until being found innocent. It brings up how a person’s memory works. Memory works in three steps. The first is encoding, or where the information is first either heard or read and goes through. The second step is storage which refers to holding some of the information in the brain for a period of time. And last, the retrieval is when information is brought back and is used again at a later time. Errors can occur in memory, such as not paying close attention and not getting information properly encoded, and memory trace which is the biochemical representation of our experience in the brain and appears to deteriorate over time. In two cases known as the Neil v Biggers and Manson v Braithwaite courts has emphasized five factors in account when looking at eyewitness identification. 1) The witnesses opportunity to view the perpetrator 2) the witnesses level of attention 3) the accuracy of witnesses previous description of the offender 4) the degree of certainty by the witness 5) the amount of time between the crime and witnessing which make up the Manson Criteria. This means there is a lot of room for errors when witnessing a crime. There are some particular set back in witness identification. Some of these include the cross-race effect, which means people have trouble identifying people outside their own racial group. A meta-analysis did an study on how this is true, people have problems identifying people outside their racial group. Another setback, known as the weapon focus effect, occurs when the witness is threated with a weapon which harms their ability to remember and identify the perpetrator. Unconscious transference occurs when a person that is falsely accused of a crime happened to be at or near the crime scene, but was not guilty of committing the crime. Retrieval inhibition is when an eyewitness can identify certain objects from a crime scene and not others. Scripts are a form of expectations and beliefs about sequences of events that occurred. Post identification feedback effect is the biased feedback to distort the memory of eyewitnesses, and can cause a witness to accuse the wrong person of a crime. Confidence in a witness’ testimony can be explained by the cognitive dissonance theory, in which a person is confident in what they think they saw or know. Eyewitness who is children may or may not be taken seriously, as their memory can be more easily distorted, especially in stressful situations. Despite all the complications that go along with eyewitness identification, we can use research to help us better the testimonial process with eyewitnesses. Factors that are outside the control of the legal system are called estimator variables which can help eyewitness identification. System variables are variables that can be controlled within the legal system such as how a witness is questioned or lineups are constructed. The US Department of Justice created some guidelines for police and officials to follow. These include: 1) Blind Lineup Administrators, in other words the person conducting the lineup knows nothing about the suspects 2) Biased Reducing Instructions or to tell the eyewitness that the true criminal might not be in the lineup 3) Unbiased lineups, or that no one person in the lineup looks significantly different from the rest or the fillers which are alternative suspects in the lineup or photo spread 4) Confidence Ratings, or how sure the eyewitness is of their selected suspect 5) Video Recording of the lineup to be seen by jury and judge 6) Sequential lineup when the eyewitnesses sees one suspect after another than the standard simultaneous lineup 7) Expert Testimony- to have one in court. All of these should be used because they can help improve the eyewitness identification process. Some techniques that can help refresh a witness’s memory include hypnosis, and a cognitive interview which is a step by step process to relax the eyewitness and slowly bring back memories. This chapter taught me a lot about the witnessing process and the hardships an eyewitness may have. It also made me realize more clearly how Jennifer Cannino wrongfully identified Ronald Cotton. It was intriguing how memory can be restored and how it can be difficult to identify a criminal. In addition, it showed me how television is not always properly displaying the truth in witness identification, especially in the lineup. I am positive this taught me something that I can remember for a long time.

terms: encoding,storage, retrieval, memory trace,
Manson Criteria, cross-race effect, meta analysis, weapon focus effect, Unconscious transference, Retrieval inhibition, Scripts, Post identification, feedback effect, cognitive dissonance theory, estimator variables, System variables, Blind Lineup Administrators, Biased Reducing Instructions, Unbiased
lineups, fillers, Sequential lineup, simultaneous lineup, hypnosis, cognitive interview

Chapter seven of the “Forensic and legal Psychology” book was very interesting. There were a couple of things that I found interesting. The first thing that I found interesting was the story at the start of the chapter. The story was about a girl named Jennifer Thompson who had been raped in her apartment. She thought to herself that she must observe every detail of this person’s face so she could identify them when she escaped. Jennifer explained that she had observed him in the dim light of her stereo. She also observed him when she went to the bathroom. When she finally was able to escape, she went to the police and they brought her some pictures. After some time of looking, she finally was able to identify Ronald Cotton. When she identified Cotton, the police officer actually said “we thought this might be the one.” Ronald Cotton was then sentenced to prison and spent 11 years before finally being released due to DNA evidence. This was a very interesting story. It was also one that brings to question that quality of eye witness testimony. Jennifer Thompson claims that she still dreams that it is Ronal Cotton that is raping her even though she was raped by someone else completely. The chapter uses this story as a base for its discussion about eyewitness testimony. It starts with talking about the process of memory. It talks about the encoding process, which involves gathering information and putting it in to memory. The second part of the memory process is storage, which refers to the actual holding of the encoded information in the brain. The final part of the memory process is retrieval, which refers to the process of which the brain actually recalls the information that it stored. This process of memory is very important when it comes to expert testimony. The reason that it is important is because it has been shown that expert testimony isn’t always correct. Also, there are factors that can affect how well people recall information. According to the chapter, eyewitness testimony has the highest rate of false conviction in crimes. According to a study by Wells, 76% of wrongfully convicted individuals that were found to be innocence happened because of wrongful eyewitness identification. This is an obvious problem that the legal system has tried to solve. The legal system has tried to solve this with the use of certain criteria that can be used to evaluate the accuracy of eyewitness identification. This process is called the Manson Criteria and it looks over things such as the eyewitness’s point of view, as well as the degree of certainty displayed by the witness. The problem with the Mason Criteria is that even though it might seem logical, it is actually really difficult to apply in situations. The chapter goes on to talk about the different biases that an eyewitness could have. An example of bias is when the police officer in the story at the beginning of the chapter says “we thought this might be the one.” This leads the eyewitness to maybe think that that person is actually the person when it is not. This process is called postidentification feedback effect. It is very important as an investigator to remain unbiased when dealing with an eyewitness. The next thing that the book talked about was the unconscious transference. This is something that we talked about in class. It is where someone will point out a person as being the one that did the crime, because they look familiar. It doesn’t matter if you saw the person in class or at a restaurant; your mind will make an unconscious identification and will use the memory of that person’s face in place of the actual criminal. The rest of the book talks about the different uses of eyewitness testimony, as well as talking about the use of hypnosis in cases that deal with an eyewitness.
The things that I found most interesting in the chapter were when it talked about stress and weapons focus. The reason that I found this interesting was because I was actually watching a self defense show and on that show the guy talked about the reason most people miss when they shoot at an attacker is because they are so focused on the weapon that the person is using. This is called the weapon focus effect. Basically, people are so focused on the weapon that they don’t pay attention to other details such as what the attacker looks like. The final thing that I found interesting was the fact that hypnosis is used in the legal process. I am for one a little skeptic when it comes to hypnosis. The reason that I am skeptic is because it doesn’t seem like it is realistic. In my opinion, a person could plant information into the mind of the eyewitness and make them say whatever they want them to say. It is also really surprising that the Supreme Court has ruled two different ways on the use of hypnosis. In the case of People v. Shirley, the California Supreme Court excluded all testimony that was acquired with the use of hypnosis. However, in another court case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of expert testimony that included hypnosis. All of this stuff I found very interesting.

The thing that I didn’t know before reading this chapter was the fact that eyewitness testimony is the cause of 76% of all the wrongfully convicted individuals that were found to be innocent. It seems to be a very high number if you ask me. Even though the Manson Criteria is suppose to help with that, I think there needs to be something else done to prevent wrongful convictions.

Psychological Terms: hypnosis, weapon focus effect, unconscious transference, postidentification feedback effect, Manson Criteria, retrieval, storage, encoding process, eyewitness testimony

Chapter 7 was a little bit of a review for me because the book I chose to do my report on was Picking Cotton. It was a really interesting book and chapter 7 helped to provide some additional information on eyewitness testimonies. The chapter starts out with a description of eyewitness testimonies and the legal system. I was shocked to read that in 49% of the cases where the defendant was convicted, there was only one eyewitness! The chapter went on to discuss eyewitness biases and how one can be influenced by the way questions are asked or by the order of line-ups vs. photo identifications as presented to witnesses. It was also interesting to learn about the cross-race effect. Being Korean myself, it’s hard for me to think that I could more easily positively identify an Asian person as opposed to an African American or Caucasian person.

Next in the chapter, a discussion on stress and weapon focus was talked about. It was interesting to learn that under high stress situations, participants are less likely to remember the person who was the attacker. A study of soldiers was used to support this claim. Other influences such as unconscious transference, leading or suggestive comments, preexisting expectations, witness confidence, and child witnesses were discussed to support the inaccuracies of eyewitness testimonies. Although a lot of this seemed like common sense, it was still shocking to learn how many things could go wrong and how easily it could be to wrongly identify someone as a perpetrator when, in fact, they are innocent.

The next section of the chapter listed 7 ways in which the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies are being improved. Things such as blind lineup administrators, bias-reducing instructions, unbiased lineups, confidence ratings, video recording, sequential lineups, and expert testimonies were discussed. The chapter concluded with a list of techniques for refreshing the memories of witnesses. Hypnosis and a cognitive interview were listed.

The entire chapter was interesting to me because, like most other people, I thought eyewitness testimonies were very accurate. I had never thought of all the factors that could potentially influence an eyewitness!

As I was reading the chapter, many things dealing with psychology came to mind. I’m taking a cognitive psychology class right now and throughout the class we will talk about four important things: pattern recognition, attention, concepts, and imagery. It’s quite obvious that a lot of these things are important in eyewitness testimonies, especially the pattern recognition and attention categories. Also, the specific realm of memory within psychology came to mind in remembering a specific person.

Social psychology also seemed important within this chapter. For example, the ways in which investigators ask certain questions and slant the way eyewitnesses think has to do with social psychology. In addition, cross-racial identification deals with social psychology in that we tend to affiliate ourselves with people we are similar to.

Within the stress and weapon focus section, I was reminded of health psychology and possibly even a little of biopsychology. Stress is important with both of these psychologies and the ways in which it affects how we remember things is definitely psychological.

I also think the idea of unconscious transference could be affiliated with Freud’s unconscious theories and the idea of child eyewitnesses can be affiliated with developmental psychology.

Terms: unconscious transference, child eyewitness, eyewitness testimonies, weapon focus, biopsychology, health psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive psychology, blind lineup administrators, bias-reducing instructions, unbiased lineups, confidence ratings, video recording, sequential lineups, hypnosis, cognitive interview, expert testimonies, witness confidence, lineup, cross-race effect

Chapter 7 began by describing the story of Ronald Cotton. Cotton was a man who was falsely accused of the rape of (eventually) two women, and he in turn served 11 years in prison for this. The driving force behind his wrongful conviction was none other than a false eyewitness identification and testimony by both of the women who he was accused of raping. Oddly enough, the sketch that the police initially drew out of the rapist actually does look more like Cotton than the actual rapist. And in the end, the first woman victims says that she still sees Ronald Cotton’s face when she thinks about the rape even though she now knows that he is an innocent man.

Mistaken eyewitness identifications lead to more wrongful convictions than any other type of evidence out there. Close behind is forensic science problems followed by false confessions and faulty informant testimonies. The book then goes on to talk about the Manson criteria. The Mason criteria consist of five factors that are supposedly supposed to be taken into account when evaluating the accuracy of an eyewitness’s identification – opportunity to view the perpetrator, level of attention by witness, accuracy of the previous description of perpetrator by witness, degree of certainty displayed by witness, and amount of time between witness and identifying. These five factors seem logical, but most of them are actually difficult to apply to actual crimes.

The memory of a witness can be affected by a few different things. First, there is something called the cross-race effect. This can be described as it being harder for people to recognize the faces of people outside their racial group than it is for people to recognize the faces of people within their racial group. This was clearly the issue in the Ronald Cotton case – he was black and the initial victim was white. There is also the idea of stress and weapon focus. Studies found that those under low-stress conditions were able to correctly identify perpetrators as a higher rate than those under high-stress conditions. As far as the weapon focus effect, when a perpetrator has a weapon in their possession it is much harder to the witness to process what the perpetrator looks like, etc. This is simply because they are focusing their attention on the potentially unexpected and deadly situation at hand with the weapon. A witness’s recall could also be altered by something as simple as changes in the wording of questions. Also, child eyewitnesses usually have different recalling abilities than adults. Children are about as accurate as an adult when presented with lineups, but only if the true perpetrator is present in the lineup. Children also have greater suggestibility than adults do.

There were seven different guidelines created to help improve eyewitness accuracy. It should first be said that there are two different kinds of variables – estimator variables (variables which are outside the control of the legal system) and system variables (factors that are under the control of the justice system). The first guideline is using blind lineup administrators. This will help reduce any bias that the administrator could bring to the identification process. Next is using bias-reducing instructions for eyewitness. This helps in removing the presumption that the witness is obliged to choose someone from the available options. Thirdly, the use of unbiased lineups is next. The lineups must be constructed using the perpetrator and then the fillers must resemble to perpetrator as well. Video recording of the identification procedures is next. This would serve as a lasting, objective, audiovisual record of what transpired during the identification process. Sixth is the use of sequential lineups. In comparison to the popular simultaneous lineups, sequential lineups are beneficial because they reduce people’s ability to compare one candidate with another, making the identification more individualized instead of comparative. Lastly, there is the use of expert testimony. These people can help increase or decrease eyewitness accuracy.

There was also some talk in the chapter on how to refresh the memories of witnesses. The first suggestion was hypnosis. Hypnosis can definitely help relax the witness and help them recall more information when compared to not be hypnotized, but this information cannot always be trusted. Some information that can be recalled during hypnosis can contain a large dose of fantasy and imaginative elaboration. They also discussed the use of cognitive interviews. These are helpful but they require a change in interview techniques for most police officers. Police officers are taught to use an interrogative style, while cognitive interviews require more of a relaxed style considering they are interviewing witnesses, not interrogating suspects in this situation.

Something that surprised me right off the bat was the story of Ronald Cotton. I had never heard this case before, but it baffled me that this could happen. Even more ridiculous is that this happens all across the country throughout the years way more than it should. I found in interesting to read about the different factors that could affect a witness’s ability to construct/reconstruct a crime. Most of the information in this chapter did not come as a huge surprise to me, and I had learned about most of it at some point or another but the cross-race effect is a very interesting factor that would have never really crossed my mind until we talked about it in class briefly or before reading this chapter. It definitely makes sense though considering our like-race is the race we are most used to seeing (usually anyways). Our brains “get rid of” the pathways associated with things we rarely encounter to make room for the things we do encounter on a regular basis. This means that the facial and body types of other races would start deteriorating. Also, the weapon focus was interesting to me as well. It would be hard to fully understand something like this unless you have unfortunately experienced it, but just like the cross-race effect, it makes 100% sense to me. Something else I never really thought about was the use of sequential lineups vs. simultaneous lineups. When you really think about it, it would be hard not to compare all of the photos you are seeing when you get to look at them all at once when using the simultaneous method. I definitely think that the sequential method would yield the best and most accurate results.

Terms: Mason criteria, cross-race effect, weapon focus effect, estimator variable, system variables, bias-reducing instructions, sequential lineups, simultaneous lineups, hypnosis, cognitive interviews

Chapter 7, Eyewitness Identification and Testimony, talked about the reliability and validity issues associated with Eyewitness accounts during trials and crimes in general. Before reading this chapter I knew that eyewitnesses were not very reliable because there could be a lot of things effecting the memory process. I knew the stress of the situation could cause some problems correctly remembering. This chapter helped to clear some things up and specifically explain why eyewitnesses are not very reliable.
The first story discussed in this chapter was about the two rape victims and how Ronald Cotton was wrongly sentenced for both of the rapes based on eyewitness testimonies from the victims. He probably would have spent the rest of his life in prison if it were not for the one attorney that decided to take another look at his case and used DNA evidence to prove him innocent. The story about Ronald Cotton is disappointing to me because as soon as the sketch was released and people thought it was him, he went to the police station to try and clear things up. Going back to the beginning of this story, the first rape victim was said to have seen the face of her assailant a number of different times. She made an effort to remember as many details about the face of her attacker as possible. This was a good strategy and I am impressed that she was able to think rationally while she was going through such a horrific event in her life. After she helped to create the composite sketch of the rapist, the picture was circulated through the community to raise awareness for this rapist. It did not take long for Ronald Cotton to be pointed out. When the victim was given a line-up of seven men, she picked out Cotton somewhat easily.
This case just surprised me because he was sentenced to life in prison without any physical evidence. The only evidence was the eye witness, a tiny piece of foam from a shoe, and evidence of a similar flashlight. This seems ridiculous to me that such little evidence could result in such a harsh sentence, especially since the other victim pointed out a different man.
I found it interesting when the process of how a memory is stored was discussed in the book. There are three different stages that play a role in making and storing a memory. Encoding is the process of gathering information. Storage is the stage where the encoded information is held in the brain. Retrieval is where the information is accessed at a later time. I was interested at how errors could be made at every stage of this process. After reading this section I found it interesting that it has been found that over time, representation of our experiences deteriorate. There can also be problems in the process of storing the information or encoding it. Our brains can select what appears to be important. The last problem can be that the memory may not be accurately recalled. After reading this I find it hard to understand how an eyewitnesses testimony can be relied on so heavily in the court system.
I also thought the research on eyewitnesses was surprising. Research has shown that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for 76 percent of the release of wrongfully committed persons. It is hard to understand that even after all of the research that has been done about eyewitnesses and the realization that it is easy to be mistaken how much face validity it has.
Just like anything else, eyewitness testimonies can obviously have biases. Biases can play a huge role in the statements and decisions made by the witness. Voir dire is the process used to expose biased jurors. I thought it was interesting how the difficulty of the jurors was discussed. Research has shown that jurors rely to heavily on eyewitnesses and have problems deciding between accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses.
I thought it was interesting to read about the cross-race effect, because research has shown that people are more likely to remember more accurately the faces of people that reside in their own racial category. I never thought about how it would be easier to remember the face of someone of my own race, but I can imagine it would be, because we are more accustomed to seeing people of our own race.
The weapon focus effect also caught my attention. This section talked about how when the perpetrator is holding a life threatening weapon, the victim is at a heightened arousal. Not surprisingly, when there is a weapon present the witness tends to focus more on the weapon than on the face of the attacker. This can create a problem remembering the face, because all of their attention was focussed on the weapon.
I thought the concept of unconscious transference was really interesting. Unconscious transference can take place when a crime occurs and someone similar to the suspect is seen near the scene of the crime or during the identification process. The example given in the book was interesting. It talked about a rape victim that identified a psychologist as her rapist, but while the rape was occurring he was at a studio filming an interview about memory, which she had seen and transferred him into the event of her rape. It is amazing how the brain can work and make correlations between random people and events to make things fit and make sense.

Terms: reliability, validity, composite sketch, encoding, storage, retrieval, bias, cross-race effect, weapon focus effect, and unconscious transference.

Summarize the chapter. What information was most surpising or interesting to you? What do you know now that you did not know prior to reading this chapter?
The chapter on Eyewitness Identification and Testimony, covered a lot of information that we briefly touched on in class, and also taught me even more information that I hadn’t known at all before this reading. The first surprising information I read was “mistaken identification played a role in 76% of cases where wrongly convicted persons were released from prison because DNA testing later proved their innocence (Costanzo & Krauss 2012).” This percentage kind of made me sick inside. It makes me much more interested in coming up with ways that psychologists could study perception and memory even more to come up with ways they could improve eyewitness memory. One finding we already know is that many times witnesses report a crime lasting much longer than it actually did. Psychologists have come to the conclusion that your body perceives time much slower when placed in a very dangerous stressful situation. For example, someone might say the incident lasted a whole 5 minutes, when in reality it was only about 45 seconds.
Something I learned during this reading was the Manson Criteria. Basically what the Manson Criteria is is a set of 5 emphasizes factors that should be taken into account when evaluating the accuracy of an eyewitness’s identification. These 5 include: the witnesses opportunity to view the perpetrator, the witnesses’ level of attention, the accuracy of the witness’s previous description of the offender, the degree of certainty displayed by the witness, and the amount of time between witnessing the crime and making the identification. The book states that although the Manson Criteria seem logical, they agree that they are difficult to apply to actual crimes. How exactly do you measure someone’s attention level? And how do you know the answer they give you is accurate, if they were probably distracted by what was happening anyway? There are a bunch of different factors that must be kept in mind when thinking about how to evaluate a witness.
Another idea I found interesting was the idea of the cross-race effect. We are more accurate in picking out people or our own race. I can see this leading to many problems, and a matter a fact it does. I learned something similar to this in my social psych class. I was asked to visit a website and pick out pictures of white people as fast as I could, while the pictures were intermixed with other different races. I was much faster at picking out the white people than any other race. So this goes to show not only is this viewed in psych and law it is also looked at in other studies of psychology as well.
I also read that people many times argued that memory was better when put into high stress situations. After psychologists tested 509 soldiers in “survival training” they ended up proving this thought wrong. Memory in fact is actually better when under low amounts of stress. This is worrisome to be because many times witnesses of crimes are under a lot of stress because of the simple fact that they are viewing a crime! So this does not help support that witnesses are going to be the most accurate when picking out a perpetrator.
After the American Psychology-Law Society (APLS) appointed a committee to review research on eyewitness testimonies they came up with some additional guidelines for police and investigators. There are 7, but I picked out 3 of them that I thought would be really helpful in increasing the accuracy of eyewitness identification.
The first one is Bias-Reducing Instructions to Eyewitnesses. This consists of letting the witness know that they don’t have to choose someone from the line-up. I think this is helpful because the witness isn’t just going to pick someone because they aren’t sure and they feel like they have to provide and answer.
The second one is Video Recording. I think it would be extremely useful to record the lineup identification process. Not only can you see how the witness picked out the person, they can also hear how the words were phrased in the instructions given to the witness as well. And these video tapes can be later used in court if needed.
The last one I found very useful was Confidence Ratings. It is reported that confidence is likely to change between the time of the trial and when the actual crime took place. Many times over time the witness’s confidence about the person they identified as the perpetrator will increase. This will be helpful to show in court, if the witness wasn’t all that sure when picking the perpetrator out of the line-up to begin with using phrases such as “I think that him” to changing it to “I had no doubts that it was him” at the time of the trial.
Key words: Manson Criteria, Video Recording, Bias-Reducing Instructions, Confidence Ratings, Cross-race Effect, Within-race accuracy

Eyewitness memory can become an essential part of either the defense, and or the prosecuting attorney when taking a perpetrator to trial. However, as the book points out eyewitness testimony is anything but certain, and far from perfect. The book addresses multiple factors that influence the reliance on this testimony including how and when the witness was questioned, how long and were they saw the crime occur, and bias and psychological effects which influence (usually negatively) when identifying the perpetrator. The book explains these factors while at the same time following a case of Jennifer Thompson vs. Ronald Cotton. Although they found Cotton guilty, it was later determined that he in fact was misidentified by the rape victim (Jennifer.) this is where the book begins to explain problems, and psychological effects that witnesses become subject too. First the relative position, time of day, and even as far as the urban or rural area in which the crime occurred all influence the accuracy of the witness. The book addresses this as the Manson Criteria. They included ability to see perpetrator, witness’s level of attention, accuracy of describing the offender, and the amount of time it took for the crime to occur. These in reality would seem very effective, however the book addresses that in all practicality the Manson Criteria is very ineffective.
Firstly when encoding a new face into our brain in terms of identification during a crime, the time that witnesses observe a crime is drastically overestimated. This is partly due to stress, and partly due to the weapon focus effect. The book addresses both of these. For instance during the common nature of “flight or fight” we often draw so much attention to the weapon (after all we are fearing for our life) that we often disregard taking notice of the offender. To me this was addressed as common sense, as that I myself would be more worried at where or who the gun or knife is pointing at rather than who was holding it. This then leads to retrieval problems when trying to identify the suspect later. After all if we were under a significant “mental load” and stress attempting to recall what we say would be very difficult. (This concept I connected to fairly easy, as that when taking an exam I often forget things I know I studied for. This is not life threating but I see the general concept as that I am under stress, so recall becomes harder.)
As the book explains this process of retrieval of new encoded messages in terms of crime only becomes more complex. For example the book addresses that further effects such as how you are questioned by law enforcement, in terms of wording bias, and how questions are posed can affect your identification. The book identifies this in several ways including leading questions, and most interesting retrieval inhibition. That is to say, if you or questions you are asked in attempt to identify the suspect are directed towards only one aspect of the crime (for example the type of shirt he was wearing) you will focus so intently on that one characteristic that recalling other aspects of the crime will be near impossible. This in contrast with when and how the witness was questioned can lead to misidentification, due to questioning by law enforcement. (Such as what happened to Mr. Cotton. When Jennifer was looking at the line-up and selected a suspect, the law enforcement official stated “we thought it may be him.” This affirmed incorrectly that her decision was correct (when it was not) and resulted in several appeals, and wrongful convictions due to the post identification feedback effect.
This is the part I thought was most interesting. I thought it was very strange that after misidentification, such as when Jennifer Thompson identified Cotton as the perpetrator, that when she was positively reinforced by the police that “her identification they thought was right.” That she would become motivated to justify that course of action. For example when Cotton came up for appeal he again would spend years in jail, after Thompson stated he was the assailant. This I thought was extremely peculiar that even if you doubted your decision the first time, you would affirm that you indeed were correct (even if you are wrong) even stronger the second time around due to cognitive dissonance. This in association with unconscious transference (or identifying someone because they are familiar) such as what Thompson did after looking at a line-up, after she studied mug shots was extremely frightening. That is to say the odds were always against Cotton because Thompson associated a “common face” with him as the assailant (unconscious transference), while at the same time being negatively reinforced that her incorrect decision was “correct.” (Feedback/ cognitive dissonance.)
This then lead myself to question just how many people would still be imprisoned if not for DNA, as that incorrect testimony by witness’s leads to the most overturned convictions. Luckily, although all of the problems with witness identification are hard to avoid, there are things that can be done to avoid what happened in the Thompson, Cotton case. For example the person conducting the lineup should not know who the suspect is, the identifier should be informed they don’t need to feel as though they have to “choose” someone as that the suspect may not even be in the lineup, or using different types of identification such as seeing possible perpetrators one at a time, rather than everyone at once. These things do reduce misidentification however, as the chapter explained the amount of weight we put in witnesses in the justice system if far too great, as that they usually are incorrect, the identification process was bias, or the factors of the crime scene were not perfect. After all, crime never occurs in a perfect setting, therefore witness memory and identification won’t be perfect, just as the book explained, hence is why crucial evidence is psychological, rather than physical.

Terms: defense/prosecution, Manson criteria, weapon focus effect, encoding, retrieval, mental load, stress, retrieval inhibition, post identification feedback effect, cognitive dissonance, unconscious transference.

The chapter begins with a story of a young woman getting raped and goes on to show how her attempts at remembering her rapist was proven wrong later. The rest of the chapter goes into how Eyewitnesses are used in courts and if they are an accurate use of evidence.
Now in regards to the story, I find it interesting that even though she was getting raped she spent most of the time attempting to memorise the features of her rapist. That takes some strong mental fortitude. However she still identified the wrong person. Now the chapter explains that the most likely reason that she did this was because of the way the suspect was introduced to her during the lineup and photo session. The detective said “we thought this might be the one” which then made Jennifer more likely to think that was the person who raped her. Another factor going in with that is that the suspect did resemble the actual raper pretty well. Another bias that is explained later in the chapter is the cross-race bias. This bias states that when identifying someone of the opposite race, we as humans, don’t concentrate on certain factors as much. We essentially have an easier time identifying someone of our own race. Another thing I find surprising about that case was there actually NO evidence other than two witnesses and that got this man convicted wrongly for 11 years.
Now psychologically there are 3 steps to attaining a memory. Encoding, Storage, Retrieval. Encoding is the actual witnessing of an event. Storage is filing that memory away in your brain. Retrieval is later “remembering” the memory. The bad part about this is there are errors that can happen at any step of that process.
Encoding can go wrong in the following ways: When you first witness a memory there are several factors that can go towards the accuracy of that memory. What was the lighting like during it. What was going on during the memory. Was there a heightened level of stress. Was there a weapon or some other factor pulling focus from crucial points. Psychology would point out that when we have heightened levels of stress a few things happen. Time seems to slow down. I can attest to this because in Afghanistan when we were under attack, time did appear to slow down and you started to pay attention to certain things more vividly. Now I use this as an example because ill compare to normal assault. When an assailant comes at you (or insurgent) you don’t look at their face as much as you look at certain things to defend yourself. Does this person have a weapon, how big are they, what are they doing that is going to hurt you. Because your going to act to defend yourself. And all of this happens in a few split seconds, but after the fact you can’t recall a lot of things that you would normally notice. What did the guy actually look like. What was the person wearing. You don’t notice these things because they aren’t important to your survival at the time.
Storage- A few of the things that I pointed out in encoding effects how storage happens. If you don’t remember certain things because you were paying attention to other happenings then it obviously wont get stored properly. What you store is probably not the exact thing that happened.
Retrieval- If there was a large amount of time in between when the crime occurred to when you have to “retrieve” this information then a lot of things can change in your perception of what happened. Not to mention that when you “stored” the information it was probably already inaccurate as to what happened so by the time you “retrieve” it for a case it has probably gotten even more skewed.
Ill briefly mention the phenomenon of unconscious transference. It is where a witness will identify someone that was NEAR the crime scene even if they didn’t commit the crime. They search for a face that they can relate to the crime and if they see someone that was there they assume that was the person who committed the crime and that’s why they remember them.
Another factor that involves itself in eyewitness accounts is scripting. Scripting is a psychological term that are beliefs that most people thing typically occur in situations. The example in the book was a gas station robbery. Even if things such as casing the joint, actually stealing money, were left out of evidence people will automatically assume those things happened anyway.
One thing that is noticeable in witnesses is called cognitive dissonance. Once a person has chosen a course of action or thought they will stick to that course with more confidence than before. Witnesses are often skeptical about a line up or photos of the person, but even if they choose wrongly or were skeptical to begin with, by the time they get the court they are very confident that they are absolutely right. That’s a bad thing because that confidence will sway a judge, and jurors to think that the witness is correct.
A way to solve all these biases and problems that come about with eye witnesses is to follow the 7 guidelines that the US Department of Justice and the APLS came up with. 1. Blind Lineup administrators, basically someone who doesn’t know the suspect in the lineup(rarely happens that way) 2. Bias-reducing Instructions to eyewitness- basically telling the witness that the suspect might not be in the lineup 3. Unbiased Lineups- Finding a lineup that very closely matches the description given by the witness 4. Confidence ratings- rating the confidence of the witness at the time of the lineup. 5. Video recording- making a digital copy of the lineups and witness testimony before court so it can be viewed by the jurors. 6. Sequntial Lineups- lineups that happen 1 person after another instead of in a line of 4 or more people. (studies show this is a better method) 7. Expert testimony- A expert on eyewitness testimony testifies in court to explain to jurors the studies and psychological research surrounding eyewitnesses and how to be careful when listening to their accounts.
Key words- Court, Testimony, Encoding, Storage, retrieval, witness, expert, Bias, Cross race effect, meta analysis(all the studies I mentioned were mostly meta analysis- huge collection of many studies) weapon focus effect, Scripts, Unconscious transference, Cognitive Dissonance,

Chapter 7 discussed eyewitness identification and what involves this idea in the justice system. Eyewitness identification is based off of memory, which involves 3 processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Although eyewitness accounts are fairly accurate, there is still room for error. When taking into account the accuracy of the eyewitnesses, one must keep in mind the Manson criteria. There are five aspects of this criteria, but three of them are most accurate and are used in self reports: the certainty of the witnesses that they recognize the perpetrator, the witnesses opportunity to view the perpetrator, and the level of attention shown by the witness. The legal system tries to avoid any mistakes or biases when using eyewitness testimony, and experts have found a few key aspects that cause these biases. Among these biases are cross-racial identifications have been shown to be less accurate than same-race identifications. The tendency for one to be less likely to correctly identify someone of the opposite race is called the cross-race effect. Another bias is that it has been shown that in high stress conditions, at least 58% of witnesses identify the wrong person, therefore it seems that high stress impairs memory and leads to incorrect eyewitness accounts. The weapon focus effect is when a witness sees the criminal holding a gun or other weapon, they will be more likely to focus on the weapon rather than the criminal.
After much research, the legal system has found ways to reduce the amount of bias in eyewitness testimonies. These include blind line-up administrators, bias-reducing instructions to the eyewitness, unbiased line-ups, confidence ratings, video recording, sequential lineups and expert testimony. At times witnesses are unable to remember certain details of a crime, therefore it is essential to find ways to help them remember. Hypnosis is a good way of helping the witness remember because people usually have hypnotic hypernesia, which is an increased state of remembrance when under hypnosis. Another way to help witnesses remember is the cognitive interview. This involves a step-by-step procedure to help the witness relax and start to slowly bring back images from the crime scene and the context surrounding it.
Something that really surprised me was that the cross-race effect occurs in children as young as 9 months old. This is surprising because one thinks of a child as not knowing the difference between races or the difference in types of people, but it is clearly obvious that at a young age children begin to see differences in people. Before reading this chapter, I was generally confused about what all consisted of a line-up. I was also unaware that there were so many biases surrounding eyewitness testimony.
Key Terms: eyewitness testimony, hypnosis, hypernesia, line-up, weapon focus, cross-race effect, encoding, storage, retrieval

Chapter 7 talked about eyewitness memory and some difficulties associated with it. In the beginning, it briefly talked about the story of Jennifer Thompson and the basics of how we encode, store, and retrieve memories, forming a memory trace. In Jennifer’s case, I believe the problem of misidentification occurred during the retrieving process. Jennifer had no problem seeing her rapist’s face and attempting to commit it to memory, but when faced with retrieving the information to identify the man, one of the following two things happened (or a combination of both possibly): unconscious transference and the cross-race effect.

Unconscious transference is when the victim or eyewitness subconsciously transfers a familiar face to the scene of the crime, or worse, to the perpetrator. Since the two men, Ronald and Bobby, looked pretty similar, I can understand why Jennifer Thompson had a misidentification. However, sometimes the familiar face and the criminal’s face look completely different. I feel like I can relate to this somewhat, because sometimes when I recall memories or events, I put people in my memory when they weren’t even there!

Something I found surprising about this chapter was the cross-race effect. It’s definitely true, but you never really think about it and how it affects you until you’re reading something like this! This is a phenomenon where people have more difficulty remembering faces of people from a different racial group, compared with people from the same group. In the case of Ronald and Bobby, I thought they looked extremely similar (pretty much the same person!), so I can see how Jennifer mixed them up. It’d be interesting to see if the same thing would’ve happened if the two men were caucasian, or if the victim was African-American.

The story towards the end of the chapter about the bus driver and 26 children was also really interesting. The process of hypnotic hypernesia is a strange tactic but also kind of genius! The fact that the bus driver could recall almost the entire license plate under hypnosis makes me think that humans have no issues with encoding and storing, but rather it’s retrieving that’s the hardest part. Maybe everything that happens to us is flawlessly put in our brains, but some memories are lost forever because we simply will never be able to retrieve them. Have you ever had one of those moments where you remember something from a long, long time ago that you had never recalled until now? I feel like hypnotic hypernesia is a really interesting field and, while it has some flaws, it has a lot of potential to be developed into a useful tool for prosecutors. In the case of Jennifer Thompson, I wonder if this would’ve helped with the identification process?

The last thing I want to discuss is the weapon focus effect, something I’d never known about until reading this. This is the idea that when people are in stressful and dangerous situations, they tend to focus on the weapon rather than the person wielding it. This makes sense I guess, since the real danger you subconsciously want to protect yourself from is the weapon. A question I have though: does this hold true to the same extent for all weapons, or are people more likely to focus on the criminal’s face if they have a less threatening weapon? It’d be interesting to compare statistics of tiny knives versus huge assault weapons.

Key Terms: Encoding, Storing, Retrieving, Memory Trace, Unconscious transference, Cross-Race Effect, Hypnotic Hypernesia, Weapon Focus Effect

Jennifer Thompson falsely identified a man, Ronald Cotton, as her rapist and as a consequence spent almost eleven years in prison as an innocent. This was the story that chapter seven started with and used it as one of the many examples of how eyewitness testimony cannot always be accurate and trusted. Even though Thompson seemed to have gotten a good look at her attacker and identified him with absolute certainty somehow something went wrong. This is the problem with many eyewitness accounts, memories can be altered, based on our own personal experiences, have fictitious events fill in the gaps, or something could go wrong with encoding, storage, or retrieval. These are just a few of the options.
One major problem is the cross-race effect. This is the tendency for it to be harder for people to distinguish specific features of other people that are not in their own race group. This could be due to the fact that we tend to spend the most time with people that are like us, such as people in our own race group, so we learn to be able to tell the difference and remember specific features of those in our same race group. However if the person we see is of a different race then we could tend to lump them all together and not remember the specific details that can tell own white/ black person from another in the same race group. I found this particularly interesting because when I was a freshman I was talking to an African American while walking to a class and he made the comment “All you white girls look the same.” I didn’t understand what he meant because I had no problem telling white people apart from one another, now I understand why that is.
It is also found that when a person is in a high stress situation there arousal is lower than when they are not, this is opposite of what most people believe. This is probably because when you are in a high stress situation your body’s defense mechanism is to shut down. You senses might diminish as a result and your memory is impaired. Also during such high stress situations the victim might experience the weapon focus effect, if an attacker is yielding a weapon the victim will focus on that and pay much less attention to the attacker him/herself. A person would be more inclined to focus on the weapon because that is the object that imposes the most danger in the situation. Also we tend to focus our attention on the unexpected, such as if someone showed up to class without any pants, since this is not the norm we would focus most of our attention on that and not as much on the lecture happening in class.
Along with weapon focus effect a person could fall victim to unconscious transference, a face that is familiar from one context is transferred to the scene of the crime. This is a big problem because since it is unconscious the person is unaware that it is happening and will firmly believe that the person they see in their minds is the perpetrator, when in fact it might just be someone that was standing around during the crime. Also leading or suggestive comments could direct a person to make certain identification. Human tend to want to please or conform to authority so if an officer gave you cues that he wanted you to pick a certain person among a lineup of when looking a picture you would probably be more inclined to pick that person to please the person in authority.
After you pick the person you believe to be your attacker your confidence that this is the correct will grow over time. The more time and effort you put into something the more passionately you feel about it, whether a project, an organization or an relationship we tend justify the amount of time we put into by saying “I’ll get and A” or “This organization will look really good on a resume” or “This relationship will be worth it in the end” whether or not those statements are true or not they are what we tell ourselves because of cognitive dissonance. This theory predicts that once you commit yourself to a certain action, you will be motivated to justify it. Once a victim identifies a perpetrator they will justify it by adjusting their memories to include that person and will grow in confidence that it was the actual person that committed the crime, so by the time the trial comes around they can say without uncertainty that the person attacked them, and they will believe it themselves.
There are two techniques that can be used for helping with the memory of a witness. One is hypnosis. This is controversial technique. In some cases it has been successful in bring out new useful information. But this can cause some issues. In certain situations it can be useful because since a person is relaxed and feels they are in a different mindset they might feel more comfortable revealing more information because they can attribute it to the hypnosis. On the flip side of this a person may not be as careful with the truth of information because if it turns out to be wrong they can say “The hypnosis made me say it” it takes the responsibility of the person. Another technique is a cognitive interview, which is a step by step process which relaxes the witness and provides multiple opportunities to report and repeat what they have seen and this method avoids leading questions. Cognitive interview tends to be the preferred of the two.

Terms: Encoding, storage, retrieval, Cognitive interview, hypnosis, defense mechanism, cognitive dissonance, weapon focus effect, leading/suggestive questions, cross race effect.

I’m currently reading the Picking Cotton book for this class, so this chapter was especially interesting to me. The book is all about eye witness identification and testimony, and it’s woven into two very personal stories, which makes this information even more relevant and interesting. The eyewitness’s identification and testimony in this book were the most compelling pieces of evidence in the trial, and they convicted the defendant for life in prison. Our text says that this is not uncommon – one study found that 74% of cases (in which the only evidence was eyewitness testimony), the defendant was convicted. The text also said that mistaken eye witness identification leads to more wrongful convictions than any other type of evidence. It’s obvious that eyewitness testimony and identification are very serious and important aspects of the legal system, and psychology has given us lots of insight on the topic.

To understand the process of eye witness identification, it’s important to understand the basics of how memory works. Cognitive psychology works its way into this topic. There are three components of memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval, and errors can occur at each stage. We aren’t able to pay attention to everything going on around us, we store only selective bits of what we do pay attention to, we forget things over time, our memories are susceptible to revision and corruption, and distortion can occur during retrieval. Now take our imperfect, biased memories, and place them in the dark (crimes often happen at night). Blur the important pieces (criminals are usually in a hurry and/or hiding their face). Even if a witness saw the perpetrator in clear day light, right in front of them, with no mask or sunglasses, for a good amount of time, there is the issue of fear. Witnesses and victims of crimes are often terrified and more concerned with their own safety than with getting a good look at the criminal.

The text talked about additional, specific biases that influence eye witness memory. Cross-racial identifications are never as accurate as same-race identifications. Witness’s stress levels impair memory, specifically in the encoding stage. If a weapon is present, a witness’s ability to recognize the perpetrator is impaired. This is known as the weapon-focus effect. Unconscious transference can occur, meaning the witness may wrongly identify someone, simply because they have a familiar face. The way law enforcers word their questions, or ask leading questions can influence witnesses (this relates to social psychology). Prior knowledge and beliefs intrude on and get mixed in with observed events. Eyewitness confidence can strongly influence a jury, when in fact is has weak correlation with accuracy. Children eyewitnesses are very susceptible to suggestibility.

With the help of psychology, the legal system has tried to improved eyewitness accuracy. Although they cannot control who witnesses a crime, and the experience of the witness during the crime (estimator variables), they can control other factors. Some examples of system variables –under the control of the legal system – are… blind line-up administrators – meaning that the person constructed the lineup or photo spread has no knowledge of the actual suspect. Eyewitnesses need to be told that the true criminal may not be in the lineup or photo spread – this is called bias-reducing instruction. An expert on eyewitness identification can be present at a trial to give an expert testimony. These experts are usually psychologists and can give jurors and judges an idea of how memory works, and the problems with eye witness’s memory.

The influence of stress on memory was the most interesting thing to me in this chapter. I had always thought that stress and a heightened state of arousal would enhance your memory. We talked in class about how time “slows down” for those who are witnesses or victims to a crime. With a slower perception of time and vivid memories of particularly stressful events, I thought this would make memories more accurate. I was dead wrong! Arousing events may lead to vivid memories, but the details of those memories may be no more accurate than memories of ordinary events. The text talked about a study done on this phenomenon. Participants in a low stress condition made more correct identifications than participants in a high stress condition. The participants in the low stress condition also identified the wrong person less than the participants in the high stress condition did. It really surprised me that arousal has such a negative effect on our encoding of information.

When reading Picking Cotton, I was appalled at how biased the eye witness identification process was. First of all, the psychological state that the witness was in seemed to have a big impact on her selection process. Even though she was told that the perpetrator might not be in the lineup, she felt that she needed to pick someone. She told herself that if she didn’t pick the man who raped her, he would be set free. This pushed her to make a selection even if she was unsure. When she picked Cotton (the wrong person) out of the lineup, the officer said to her, “We thought that might be the one.” This immediately reinforced her decision. She went from, “I think that’s him,” to a positive, with-out-a-doubt, identification. I now know that in 1998, the American Psychology-Law Society put together some guidelines for gathering evidence from eyewitnesses. One of the guidelines includes blind lineup administrators. This states that the person who conducts the lineup should not be aware of which member of the lineup is the suspect. If this had been this case for Ronald Cotton (in the 1980’s), he may not have spent a decade in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Terms: eye witness, conviction, acquittal, memory, encoding, storage, retrieval, cognitive psychology, perpetrator, cross-race effect, weapon-focus effect, unconscious transference, social psychology, estimator variables, system variables, bias-reducing instruction, expert testimony

Chapter 7 is about eyewitness identification and testimony in trials. The chapter spends most of its time explaining various reasons why eyewitnesses are unreliable. The chapter starts off with a story about a woman named Jennifer Thompson, who was raped by a man and then accused the wrong man, Ronald Cotton, of committing the act. Jennifer’s story is a good summary of the various topics that the chapter goes into discussing and shows why understanding the shortcomings of eyewitness testimony is important. The chapter spends a lot of time talking about memory and states that memory has three separate processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding involves the receiving if information and preparing it for storage. Storage involves keeping that information in the brain until it is necessary to retrieve. Retrieval involves accessing that stored information. I feel that this process best relates to cognitive and biopsychology due to the involvement of perception and the brain in the cycle of memory. After going into detail on the process of memory, the chapter describes something used by the courts in the past called the Manson Criteria. The Manson criteria lists five important factors to determine the accuracy of an eyewitness testimony: the opportunity to view the perpetrator, the witness’s level of attention, the accuracy of the witness’s previous description of the offender, the degree of certainty displayed by the witness, and the amount of time between witnessing the crime and making the identification. Some of these factors seem like they would be useful but due to further explanation of the chapter, most of them seem like they would still be a problem. The chapter explains that there is no accurate way of measuring the witness’s level of attention during the crime and it is basically left up to the witness themselves to determine, which tends to be biased. The chapter also spends time talking about concepts that I find to be very interesting, such as how a victim’s perception of time during a crime tends to warp and make it seem as if the crime lasted much longer than it actually did. Another concept involving victims that I find interesting is the idea of weapon focus, saying that while the victim is under stress, they are likely to spend more time focused on the weapon the perpetrator is using to assault them than the actual perpetrator themselves. Another concept that the chapter discusses which I find to be interesting is the concept of the cross-race effect. The cross race effect is a racial bias that makes it easier to identify a person of the same race as you, but more difficult if they are of a different race. I feel that this concept is an important one and relates nicely to social and cognitive psychology. Another concept that relates to social psychology is the postidentification feedback effect, which involves the influence of feedback when identifying perpetrators. A person may be told to identify who committed the crime and after doing so, be told that the person they accused was a primary suspect or someone that wasn’t thought to be guilty and this feedback can influence the person’s certainty in their accusation. The chapter spends its last part describing various ways that eyewitness testimony can be improved to ensure accuracy. One thing that I didn’t know is that hypnosis is actually used in certain circumstances to help refresh the memory of a witness. I didn’t think that such a concept would be used in a professional setting. Overall, I found this chapter to be very interesting and I feel like I learned a lot from it. The chapter seemed to focus on topics mainly related to the fields of cognitive, social and biopsychology.

Terms: eyewitness identification/testimony, encoding, storage, retrieval, cognitive, social, biopsychology, Manson Criteria, cross-race effect, postidentification feedback effect

In chapter 7 it starts off with giving a great example of how innocent people were sent to jail before the DNA testing become available in solving cases. Ronald Cotton was a man that spent 11 years sitting jail waiting for a miracle to prove that he was innocent. An article from New York Times in 2009 said that more than 200 offender had been found innocent due to DNA evidence. DNA evidence is get one example of advances in technology helping solve cases.
One key thing that led to the conviction of Ronald Cotton was the victim being an eyewitness and believing that Ronald was the man that raped her. To this day his face still haunts her dreams; his face will remain in her memory forever. Memory is very important when it comes to solving a case; the most important memory is the victims. The victim must first encode any information about the offender or even anything that can help identify the criminal. Then the brain must take this information and putting it in storage to be retrieved later for police. Neil v. Biggers and Manson v. Braithwaite are two major cases that made an impact on eyewitness identification in criminal cases. The Manson Criteria broke down how reliable a witness’s testimony into five factors 1) the witness’s opportunity to view the perpetrator, 2) the witness’s level of attention, 3) the accuracy of the witness’s previous description of the offender, 4) the degree of certainty displayed by the witness, and 5) the amount of time between witnessing the crime and making the identification. The first few minutes after a crime are the most important because that is when the memory is most reliable.
When it comes to memory and trying to recall every detail to help catch the criminal it can be very difficult for anybody. I personal don’t think I could try to give a description of an offender’s face to sketch artist. There are so many factors that make it hard for a witness to identify the offender and that are why it helps to have other evidence in cases. The psychological trauma of being a victim of a crime or even witnessing a crime can have a major impact on a person’s memory. One important factor is the situation during the crime, most crimes happen at night and most offenders will use something to hide their faces. Then one thing that causes problems for police is cross-racial identification and didn’t that know that it’s extremely hard for races to identify people within their own race. A persons’ safety is a major factor when it comes to identifying an offender because most are victims of weapon focus effect. When something is threating your life a person tends to focus on that.
With so many factors against the identification of an offender the Department of Justice wanted to use guidelines to help improve a witness’s reliability. Each of the guidelines helps reduce error and bias from the eyewitness. Witness need to have confidence that who they identified is the right person, office must encourage the witness that they were correct. This will help recover the memory better and feel more confident in court. Hypnosis and cognitive interview are used to help the witness recall details of offender or the crime.
Terms: DNA, encode, storage, retrieval, Manson Criteria, trauma, memory, cross-racial identification, weapon focus effect, bias, hypnosis, cognitive interview.

I really find it interesting to read stories like this chapter started out with. I‘ve see this happen on TV shows but it’s not the same. In the book they showed pictures of the man that was wrongly convicted and the man that actually did do it. I like being able to apply what we’ve learned into an example like this. Thinking to myself “oh, when she was looking at his facial features she was encoding them. Meaning that she was gathering the information she thought would be needed to identify her assailant. Then she does what is referred to as storage. This term simply means that she is holding that encoded information in her brain overtime. When she goes to the police to tell them what she saw that’s referred to as retrieval; accessing the information out of storage. Those terms are categorized as memory processes.
What I found most surprising was that Jennifer Thompson took the time, while with the attacker, to notice features about him and yet she was wrong. Granted the composite sketch looked like both guys. The fact that she took the time during such a terrible time to notice it and she got another guy convicted and sent to prison for 11 years! She ruined another man’s entire life because she thought she knew what she saw.
I find the Manson criteria an interesting aspect to evaluating the accuracy of an eye witness’ identification. There are 5 factors that need to be taken into account when evaluating their accuracy. They’re general ones like the witness’ viewing of the perpetrator, their level of attention, the previous description of the offender, the degree of certainty, the amount of time between making the identification and the crime. Psychology can coincide with the Manson criteria. As we discussed in class if someone has a knife to your throat (like Jennifer Thompson did) it can impair your ability to retain any other information. In that moment your brain is merely focusing on the life threatening issue at hand. In the text is described it making Jennifer seem calm when noticing her assailant features. But in a moment like that thing may be distorted because you don’t have the proper lighting and aren’t taking in information clearly due to the matter at hand. She saw facial features from turning on the light, briefly, and the light on the radio.
I was unaware that they used hypnosis to refresh the memories of witnesses. I thought that most people didn’t see this as a science. Once the witness is hypnotized they are asked to go back to the crime and look for critical parts of the event. The text stated that most people can remember more information under hypnosis. Like I thought, there are problems with using hypnosis. The witness may be recalling more information but that information may not be correct. It could be something they had seen on TV, or merely a fantasy. Overall, it does not increase the recall of accurate information.

Terms: convicted, encoding, assailant, storage, retrieval, memory processes, composite sketch, convicted, Manson criteria, eye witness, identification, offender, degree of certainty, hypnosis,

Chapter 7 explains the difficulties that can affect accurate identification of a perpetrator. Research has shown that eyewitnesses are given too much credibility when identifying suspects to a crime. The book mentions the 5 criteria that should be taken into account during a case. These are called the Manson Criteria. They are the witnesses opportunity to see the perpetrator, the level of the attention the witness gave them, the correctness of the initial description of the perpetrator, how certain the eyewitness was when identifying the perpetrator the first time, and the amount of time between seeing the crime and identification. It has been proven that during the time of an extremely stressful event, an eyewitness tends to believe the crime took 3 or 4 times longer than the actual time.
There are a lot of controversial ways to try to reconstruct the memory the eyewitness has of the crime. This is usually done to have the witness try to remember something important they may have missed that may lead investigators to a lead. The first one is hypnosis. The belief that people will recall more information during this state is called hypnotic hypernesia. This is under scrutiny because some researchers believe this may lead people to try to imagine things that simply weren’t seen. This may lead an increase in information, but it may not be accurate information. Rather than hypnotizing the eyewitness, Ron Fisher and Edward Geiselman created the concept called cognitive interview. This is where the eyewitness is relaxed and asked to recall the scene as they saw it. Research has shown that cognitive interviewing improves recollection of accurate information. This technique has already been taught to the police forces in England and Wales; however it has not been here in the U.S.
There are several ways to back up the credibility of a witness while making sure they are making an accurate identification of the perpetrator. There are several variables that are taken into account and minimized. Variables that can be controlled by the justice system are called system variables while the variables that cannot be controlled are called estimator variables. One way of minimizing the variables is having the lineup administrator be unaware as to who the suspect is. This prevents any possible influence from the justice system and relies entirely on the witness’s memory. Even the way administrators say something can influence the identification of the perpetrator. When the eyewitness believes the perpetrator may not be in the lineup. This allows them to feel less pressure to choose the correct person. Another variable that can be controlled is biased lineups. When all of the suspects in the lineup fit the description of the perpetrator, it allows for less legal system bias. This makes the eyewitness compare each suspect individually, rather than against each other. Another way of displaying lineups is by showing the eyewitness pictures of the suspects. When the witness sees one photo and decides it is not the perpetrator, the investigator will show them another picture. This is called sequential lineups. Simultaneous lineups are when each of the suspects are lined up next to each other, either in person or with their pictures. Due to the increase in technology, there has also been an increase in showing the video recording of the identification of the perpetrator in court. This shows the judge and the jury how positive an eyewitness was about identification at the initial time of arrest. This helps to allow the legal system decide for itself on whether someone is guilty of the crime or not.
One thing I found interesting and learned in this chapter was how difficult it is to identify a perpetrator to a crime. Like many other people, had I been called to jury duty, I probably would have put too much emphasis on the eyewitness’s identification. I also never thought the legal system was so biased towards different criminals/suspects that they would try to influence an eyewitness’s identification.

Key Terms: Manson Criteria, eyewitness, perpetrator, hypnosis, hypnotic hypernesia, cognitive interview, system variables, estimator variables, blind lineup administrator, sequential lineups, simultaneous lineups,

Chapter 7- Eyewitness and Testimony
This chapter starts with an introduction story about a falsely convicted rapist, Ronald Cotton. This story drawls a direct link to memory trace, eyewitness accounts and the eyewitness testimony. In the case of Ronald Cotton, he was falsely identified and convicted of multiple rapes. As it shows in the chapter, the police sketch is strikingly familiar to Cotton's facial appearance. This is not the mistake of the sketch artiest, but the flaws of how the victim and witnesses perceived and produced mental images of the attacker. This process involves memory trace, along with memory storage and retrieval. Unfortunately in many cases a single eyewitness does not produce a quality recollection of criminal events as the public would think.
I found the research and content discussed in the text about eyewitness testimony to be very shocking. Almost ¾ of the 347 cases the defendant was convicted based on eyewitness testimony. Out of those convictions, only ½ were one eye witness testimony. This leads me to believe that the court system puts to much trust in the witnesses capacity to successfully recall events. One can only wonder how many false convictions resulted from eyewitness testimony. The amount of variables that sque ones judgment in eyewitness memory construction and recollection of a crime is substantial. The criminal situation at hand including stress, and violence would have an effect on how the victim or witness portrayed the offender. We also have subliminal judgments that effect our testimony, like cross-race effect, racial bias, weapon focus effect, unconscious transference. All of these variables effect a persons psychology and mental ability to lay memory and recall the correct features.
The psychology of the eyewitness or victim can be effected by so many variables from the time of the initial crime up until the testimony or trial. In some instances stated in the text and public media, the victim or witness can have post traumatic stress brings back flashback like memories of that traumatic event. This form of PTSD could in return help in testifying as a eyewitness or it could also cause some type of psychological block that would prevent that person from producing an effective statement or testimony. The psychology of a child eyewitness is less matured and completely different from that of an adult. How a child would perceive a crime compared to a more mentally matured adult would differ drastically.
In this chapter I also found the techniques used for refreshing an eyewitness's memory to be very intriguing. These techniques allow the analyzer at the time to zoom in or focus on important memories that the witness may hold more important than others. The psychology and mental memory of a eyewitness can be extracted in great detail through various types of hypnosis. One type that is referred to in the chapter is hypnotic hypernesia; this technique can produce memory hardening. Other techniques are less invasive but can also be effective depending on the witness. Cognitive interviewing is a process of asking the eyewitness a series of designed questions in order to extract the honest correct memories. These cognitive interviewing phases should also produce new information about the event that the witness may not have remember till now.
The psychology of an eyewitness can be manipulated and effected both positively and negativity by different variables All of these variables and environments at the time of the event can produce misguided memories; epically in times of stress or violence of a crime. On the other hand we can also mold and extract the psychological memories with psychological techniques in order to get he honest and true eyewitness testimony.

Key Terms: Psychology, eyewitness testifying, testimony, memories, psychological techniques, memories, flashbacks, cognitive interviewing, cross-race effect, mental variables, environmental variables, hypnosis hypnotic hypernesia, memory trace, bias, unconscious transference, weapon focus effect.

Today's blog is over Chapter 7: Eyewitness Identification and Testimony. This chapter starts off with a little background story of a case of false accusation using an eyewitness testimony. Jennifer Thompson falsely accused Ron Cotton of raping here and he was convicted and put in prison for eleven years before he was proven innocent. I had heard this case before and it ceases to surprise me that someone could be so confident that someone did something this serious to them and be wrong. Speaking for myself, I would be pissed if I was Ron.

The next section gives an overview of the three components of memory. The first component is encoding, which is gathering the information itself from your senses. The second component is storage, where we store this encoded information in our memories. The third component is retrieval, which is actually retrieving and recalling this stored encoded information from memory at a later time. These components have a lot to do with biopsychology in that the brain is the most important tool that we use when it comes to our senses perceiving and storing this information.

In our legal system an eyewitness testimony is often the most important and compelling evidence in court. Thus, courts look at five factors when assessing an eyewitness account. These factors are also known as the Mason Criteria. The first factor is the eyewitnesses window to view the perpetrator. The more time spent assessing this person the between the eyewitness account. The second factor is the level of attention the eyewitness is paying. The third factor is the accuracy of the previous description of the perpetrator. The fourth factor is the degree of confidence of the eyewitness. The fifth and final factor is the amount of time between the witness of the crime and the identification.

Sometimes and eyewitness account may contain some sort of bias. To control or expose these biases the court may use the method of vior dire, or questioning potential jurors. They may also use cross examination of jury deliberation. In addition to bias, eyewitness accounts may also have setbacks as well. These include the cross-race effect, where an eyewitness has trouble identifying people outside their own racial group. Another is the weapon focus effect, where when a witness is threatened by a weapon they tend to focus own the weapon more than other details of the crime scene. Unconscious transference occurs when a person who is at or near a crime scene is falsely accused when they are in fact innocent. Retrieval inhibition occurs when the eyewitness can identify certain things or objects in the scene of the crime and not others. Another setback is scripts, which is a set of expectations or beliefs about sequences of events that have occurred. The final setback is post identification feedback, which is a biased feedback that distorts the memory of an eyewitness and can lead to them accusing the wrong person.

The book then talks about seven methods that the legal system uses to improve an eyewitness's accuracy through the controlling of certain variables. Estimator variables are factors outside the control of the legal system, such as as the crime is taking place and how the eyewitness may deal with the stress of the event. System variables are factors under the control of the legal system. These seven methods are used to control the system variables. The first is through the use of blind lineup administrators. These reduce the bias that the administrator brings to the identification process. The second is the use of bias reducing instructions, which let the eyewitness know that they are not forced to choose someone from the lineup. The third are unbiased lineups, which are lineups made using the perpetrator and fill-ins that resemble the perpetrator. The fourth method is confidence ratings, which assess how sure they are of their choice. The fifth is through the use of video recordings to record and document everything that went down during the identification process. The next method is using sequential lineups, where a witness sees one person at a time and then decides. The final method is the use of expert testimony in court.

The last section of the book talks about ways in which to refresh an eyewitness's memory. This can be through the use of hypnosis, which is used to remember blocked, unfocused, or forgotten details of an eyewitness memory. They may also perform a cognitive interview with the eyewitness to relax them and review the context surrounding the crime.

The information that was the most surprising to me was how inaccurate an eyewitness testimony can be and what can result from that. The book stated that 76% of wrongfully convicted individuals that were found to be innocent were convicted to due wrongful eyewitness identification. That just seems a little scary to me. Something that I did not know prior to this reading was that hypnosis was an actual technique that the legal system employs. That is pretty cool I think although it seems a little far-fetched.

Terms: Encoding, Storage, Retrieval, Mason Criteria, Vior dire, Cross Examination, Jury Deliberation, Cross-race Effect, Weapon Focus Effect, Unconscious Transference, Retrieval Inhibition, Scripts, Post Identification Feedback, Estimator Variables, System Variables, Blind Lineup Administrators, Bias Reducing Instructions, Unbiased Lineups, Confidence Ratings, Video Recordings, Sequential Lineups, Expert Testimony, Hypnosis, Cognitive Interviews

Eyewitness Identification and Testimony
This chapter began with the story of Jennifer Thompson. A Perpetrator broke into her home, held a knife to her throat and raped her. Jennifer claimed that she forced herself to memorize her rapist face. She did this by turning on the light in the bathroom and her lamp in the bedroom. Luckily, the prep had the kitchen door open, in which he used to break into Jennifer’s home. Jennifer ran out and made it to her neighbor’s home. However the prep got a way and later that night broke into another woman’s home and raped her as well. As the case goes, Jennifer go to the police station to identify the man that raped her. But first the policemen show Jennifer different pictures of men that they already had photos of. Then Jennifer described what she thought she saw. The result became to look like a man name Ronald Cotton. Cotton heard that the police were looking for him, so Cotton went down to the police station to see if he himself could figure out what was going on. The police arrested him, and put him in a lineup of 6 other men. Jennifer was convinced that the man who raped her was indeed Ronald Cotton, and picked him out in the lineup as well. Even though the second rape victim stated that Ronald was not the man the raped her, Ronald Cotton was convicted for the rap of Jennifer Thompson. Later he was presented with a second trial, where Ronald had learned about the real perpetrator, Bobby Poole. However, when the trial began Bobby did not confess to have been involved with the rapes, but testified that Ronald had nothing to do with it. But the victim of the second rape that had occurred the night Jennifer was raped testified, but this time stated that it was Ronald Cotton that had raped her. Ronald Cotton was sentenced to life in prison. He spent 11 years until he was finally found innocent do to blood samples of himself, and Bobby Poole. Even though Ronald Cotton was found innocent, Jennifer Thompson still says that it was Ronald’s face that she was when she was raped.

Jennifer Thompson was a key example about how people misinterpret their own memories, and due to this interpretation innocent people can be convicted for a crime they didn’t commit. Members of law enforcement need to understand how complex memory is, and to understand the components with in memory, such as Encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is when information is gathered and transforming it to be held in memory. Storage is when the encoding information is held in the brain for a period of time. Lastly, Retrieval refers to being able to find the certain information that was held in your memory and pulling it out at a later time (i.e. remembering it). The chapter proceeds on explaining that how a study showed that with 347 cases involving eyewitness evidence, 74% of the cases the defendant was convicted, and 49% of those cases only had one eyewitness. This shows how valuable eyewitness is to law enforcement, but only when the whiteness is not mistaking. The book then illustrates the Manson criterion ( pg. 142, Forensic and Legal Psychology), that illustrates 5 factors in identifying the accuracy of eyewitness’s identification: (1) witness’s opportunity to view the prep. (2) Witness’s level of attention. (3) Accuracy of the witness’s previous description of the offender. (4) The degree of certainty displayed by the witness. (5) Amount of time between witnessing the crime and making the identification. This sounds a very thorough process in the determining eyewitness accuracy in identification. However, this type of criteria is heavy to follow, especially when determining the level of attentiveness. The book then continues with talking about the incident when Mr. Woo was robbed and identified Emilio Meza as the man who robbed him. But what caused Mr. Woo to identify was the fact that he is more familiar with people with physical features as he is, and cannot identify the difference between a Emilio, who was Hispanic, with other Hispanic people. This is an example of “cross-race bias”. I think is a huge aspect when involved with eyewitness reports. Maybe that why we see such a trend of African American people in prison, but the majority “white people” have a less preference to black faces, and accuse any black person as the person that harmed them.

What I found most surprising when reading chapter 7 was the very first story about Jennifer Thompson. I found it surprising how the police had her look at pictures of different men, before she gave her description what she thought the man looked like. I feel that that itself would be one of the first things that would misconstrue with Jennifer’s memory of the face of the perp. Another thing I though was surprising was that even though Jenifer was certain that it was Ronald Cotton that raped her, that there was still no “hard” evidence, sperm, blood, or anything, but yet convicted him anyway. What I have learned after reading this chapter is how crucial and complex the memory really is. I knew how the process of encoding, storage and retrieval worked, but the fact of how easy it is to have your memory let astray or transformed. The big thing that I learned was the cross-race affect. I took a IAT Harvard Race test for my Women, Men and Society class, and this test resulted in what “faces” we had a higher preference with in relation to different words associated with the placement of the faces. My result, along with most races, said that I had a higher preference to people with faces that are the same race. That means that I have a better result in noticing the differences between people with in my same race. I feel that with the case of Mr. Woo, and Mr. Meza, that these same results lead to Mr. Meza being falsely accused and for robbing Mr. Woo’s store.

The summary of Chapter 7 – Eyewitness Identification & Testimony as well as answering these questions: “What information was most surprising or interesting to you?” and “What do you know now that you did not know prior to reading this chapter?” throughout my blog.

The authors of the book started this chapter off with an introduction of a true life story about eyewitness identification and what can happen if and when a victim identifies the wrong perpetrator. The victim, Jennifer Thompson helped create a sketch of her rapist and on multiple occasions picked out who she thought for sure the perpetrator was naming Ronald Cotton as the person who had raped her. Ronald, who turned himself in when police were looking for him because he knew he was innocent, ended up being convicted for her rape as well as another woman’s (two years later during a retrial). After several attempts after the first retrial he finally got his day in court again after a total of 11 years. It was then that DNA evidence excluded him from being the actual perpetrator and he was released. Even though the actual rapist was caught with the DNA evidence in my opinion, the damaged had been done in more than one aspect. The story was in my opinion a great way to introduce the eyewitness testimony and the legal system as well as incorporating a psychological influence, memory. You can see how that story quickly identified the link between psychology and law while intriguing the readers with the material it was about to unfold. I especially liked how it reminded me that there are psychologists who study memory and through research have found the three component processes of memory which are encoding (gathering info & putting it in a form that can be held in memory), the storage (referring to holding the encoded info in the brain over time), and the retrieval (accessing & pulling out the stored info at a later time). It also defined our whole memory trace which is the biochemical representation of our experience in the brain – it appears to deteriorate with time. According to our book, Forensic and Legal Psychology, “not only do we tend to forget as time passes, but our memories become more vulnerable to revision and corruption”. That was something that I assumed but was not for certain that we as humans do in fact do. What I mean is now know for a fact that we can and sometimes do alter our own memories or revise them to our benefit or even corrupt them to suit our needs. It was from that point on that I was hooked and the rest of the chapter for me was amazing. Basically the chapter was divided into five components or sections.

The first component of chapter 7 was about the eyewitness testimony & the legal system. It provides statistics and a graph showing the four major causes of wrongful convictions (eyewitness testimony was the largest with 76% of cases where wrongly convicted persons were released from prison due to DNA testing later). That was very surprising to me. I did not realize that it was that high in wrongful convictions due to eyewitness testimony being wrong. It is a horrible statistic and says absolutely nothing positive for the Justice System. This section also talks about how the legal system is attempting to expose eyewitness bias through a technique called vior dire, which is the questioning of potential jurors during jury selection. But this is not always helpful when and if the eyewitness believes he or she is telling the truth but is mistaken so it doesn’t matter who the jury is if they believe the witness then that’s how the story will go.

The second section is about the construction and reconstruction of eyewitness memories and how sometimes it is not always easy to remember what you think you saw. There is also a part about cross-racial identification which explains the cross-race effect and that was also something that I assumed but did not know for sure and now I do because I learned in here in chapter 7. The accuracy is worse for cross-race than it when it is within your own race. There was a whole meta-analysis of 39 studies just to prove that point. And I have been saying this for years and people tell me I’m wrong well, no more of that, here it is in black in white, no pun intended. Here it also talks about how stress and having to deal with weapons also affects our memory of the people or events in a crime. One very important term used was the weapon focus effect which plainly states that when a victim sees a gun, knife etc… they are not able to recognize their assailant because their focus is on the weapon which poses a greater risk to them. It also talks about children as witnesses and how they can be just as good or bad as adults, especially during a line up when the perpetrator is not even there. Children will do even more poorly if that is the case.

The third section involves the use of research findings to improve eyewitness accuracy. There are some rules put into place to help limit the errors involving eyewitness accuracy. One was the blind lineup administrators, which is that the person who does the lineup or photo session is not aware of which member of the lineup/photo is the suspect. Another important rule involves the bias-reducing instruction which is the removal of the assumption that the witness is has to pick someone during a line-up or photo shot. There are also now video recordings and sequential lineups as well as expert testimony. The improvements are getting better but until we have a legal system that does not put away innocent people there will always be room for improvement.

Finally the chapter ended with the different techniques for refreshing the memories of witnesses one being through hypnosis. I found this not only interesting but intrigued as well. Hypnosis is used in the legal system as a way to bring out the memories of crime victims and witnesses to crimes as well. Some still argue whether it really is useful or not but it is clear that the person being hypnotized is relaxed and in a focused state. This section really had me going because even though I am a Psych major I didn’t quite believe in hypnosis. But now after reading this section I am a true believer. Explained in detail was a phenomenon called hypnotic hypernesia which is now the reason I have changed my views. Without leaving out a very important part of this section I have to include the cognitive interview findings which I believe to be the best way to improve the retrieval of memories from witnesses.

Basically this chapter was about how crimes scenes are not always physical but sometimes there just as psychological as well. Just as you would take the right steps to protect a crime scene from blood or evidence mishaps, you need to make sure that the psychological well-being of the witnesses and/or victim memories are intact as well. This means interviewing without coercing or being suggestive during a lineup, both have psychological influences and if not dealt with properly can cause irreversible effects like putting the wrong person in jail just as the chapter began. The main concept is you must take care of all the evidence both physical and psychological in the name of justice.

Terms: Eyewitness, identification, victim, perpetrator, trial, re-trial, court, DNA, psychologists, memory, eyewitness testimony, law, cases, encoding, storage, retrieval, memory trace, legal system, forensic, legal psychology, vior dire, jury, jurors, eyewitness bias, justice system, convictions, prison, cross-racial identification, cross race effect, meta-analysis, weapon focus effect, assailant, evidence, bias-reducing instruction, witness, lineup, sequential lineups, video recordings, expert testimony, hypnosis, hypnotic hypernesia, jail, innocent, justice and legal system.