Are Eyewitness Identifications Reliable?

Are Eyewitness Identifications Reliable?Eyewitness testimony is wizard of the or so commonly employed forms of direct evidence presented in court and is much more persuasive to juries than circumstantial evidence. Memory is much defined as the figure outing, store and retrieval of info acqui red ink through learning. Throughout your day, thousands of sights, sounds, smells and other stimuli from the out-of-door environment flood your sensory receptors. All this information, whether paid attention to or non, is briefly held in your sensory retention. Sensory retrospect is the entry distributor point of retention, where new incoming sense-based information is stored for a in truth brief period. small-term retentiveness is a holding dodge with a limited stor get on with capacity (7 +/- 2 items) and duration. Information is stored temporarily, and assuming that no rehearsal process is used, eject be retained fairly well for the kickoff a few(prenominal) seconds, but f or a longer time than sensory memory. After about(predicate) 12 seconds, however, recall starts to decline and by 18-30 seconds almost all information disappears if it has not been renewed in some way. The duration can be deepen if some rehearsal is involved. Long-term memory refers to memory system that stores almost an unlimited amount of information, which can be stored everyplace a lifetime with rehearsal. It comprises of 2 different systems called declarative memory (specific facts and imports) and procedural memory (actions and skills that expect been learned previously). take away and recognition also play a role in the process of retrieving information. Recognition is the ability to elicit stored fabric (memory) through the use of a cue (Eg. A photo line-up). Recall on the other hand is the ability to elicit stored material without externally providing either type of cue. The reliability of information is an important factor when it comes to drawing mistrustfuls and maintain offenders and providing a testimony at trials.Factor One Age During draw in which a youngster is a witness to an progeny, the credibility of that tyke and whether their testimony is reliable, is often questioned. Young children are able to testify, however they must(prenominal) be plunge competent before they can do so. The child must be able to beneathstand the obligation of telling the truth, and the set up of lying. If the child is deemed unfit to testify, their anterior statements to counsellors, doctors, or law enforcement may be used at trial.Article oneThe purpose of first discover conducted was to determine whether children as young as 6 or 7 years of epoch could understand and perform the task of identification, and whether decisional bias and committing fewer false alarms increases with age. Forty eight children were recruited, twenty five male and 23 female. The children were separated into twain groups, 2 separate conditions (stealing vs. hel ping). They were all displayn a short video recording individually, showing four men, dressed in identical red shirts in a soccer locker room. At the end of the video it shows one of the men walking out with two sports bags, one with a New York Yankees logo on it, which had previously been brought in by one of the other men. Each child was furnishn instructions before and after watching the video, which were designed to frame the act, as a moral wrong-doing (stealing) or pro-social (helping). The musicians in the stealing condition were asked to identify the man who take the bag. The others in the helping condition were asked to help the owner of the bags find him to give him a reward. After seeing the film, the participants were asked to say what they had witnessed, what happened in the film, and if they failed to mention that constitution of the act (stealing or helping), the experimenter did. The children were then shown a series of photographs, presented sequentially, and for each photo, they were asked to identify whether it was or was not the man. The photos were all taken against an identical neutral background, with them existence head-and-shoulders shots with each individual earing the same red t-shirt. In the end the children were asked if they had any questions and were praised for their cooperation, they were then al busteded to choose a coloured pen as a reward and given a certificate of appreciation. The data supported the mental process hypothesis that, younger children would apply a more negligent measuring stick when making witness judgements of moral transgressions. The results show that children in the younger age groups were more prone to make false alarms than children in the 11-14 years age group, and children in the youngest age group were more seeming to be very sure that a person was guilty of stealing when he was not, discriminated to those in the older age groups. In conclusion, younger children are not as reliable when it comes to being an eyewitness to an event.Article twoThere is normally a delay from the time a crime is witnessed and a distrust being apprehended, this allows the comic to undergo a change in show, for theoretical chronicle changing their hairstyle or hair colour. It is unclear how adults and childrens identification abilities compare when the shadowy changes their appearance. In a recent meta-analysis, with simultaneous presentation, it showed that children over 5 were as stainless as adults in producing comparable correct identification order. This study manipulated a suspects appearance (hair colour style) to become no change conditions (line-up members match the suspects appearance at the time of the crime) versus change conditions (line-up members do not match the suspects appearance at the time of the crime). Both children and adults were tested. 239 adults were recruited from the introductory psychology participant pool at a university in Eastern Ontario, Canada, and 96 children recruited from topical anaesthetic elementary schools in Eastern Ontario, Canada. Upper body photos were taken resembling the suspect with short, colorise hair, or dark mid-length hair. From the assortment of photos, sextette photos of men that matched the suspects description with short, grey hair and six photos that matched the suspects description with longer, darker hair were selected to for the line-ups. Two target-present line-ups were conducted, one line-up consisted of six photos, which consisted of five line-up members who had short, grey hair and the suspects photo (with short, grey hair). The second line-up consisted of six photos, which consisted of five line-up members who had longer, darker cook hair and the suspects photo (with longer, darker, brownness hair). There were also target-absent line-ups conducted, one line-up consisted of five foils with short grey hair, with the suspects photo replaced with a matching male. The other line-up consiste d of five foils with darker brown hair with the suspects photo replaced with a matching male. The results show that in a meta-analysis comparing the childrens and adults correct identification rates, children as young as 5 years of age were found to be able to select the suspect from a group of photos containing the suspect, at a rate comparable to adults. This changed however, when the suspects didnt match his appearance at the time of the crime. For both children and adults, there was a strike in their correct identification rates when the suspects appearance changed, they both had great difficulty in correctly identifying the guilt suspect. One reason for a decrease in correct identification following a change in appearance is that eyewitnesses may use hairstyle as a key bulls eye for identification. Overall the elimination procedure is the most feative when it comes to identification rates for both children and adults.Factor two Stress/Arousal Witnessing a move event (an a ct of violence) is likely to elicit arousal and to be sieveful. universe under emphasize at the time of encoding can have an effect on the memory process, typically enhancing or preserving memory for horny information, this can have an interesting implication for eyewitness accounts. Research has found that in the area of emotion and memory has provided evidence that stress influences the long-term memory processes.Article oneThe culture of this study was to examine the later(prenominal) effects of misinformation exposure on memory for a negative arousing to-be-remembered event encoded under stress. They adapted a slideshow, with materials from Payne et al. (2006), then added a misinformation usage 48 hours after encoding and 48 hour prior to memory testing. sixty-eight undergraduate students were recruited through the university of Arizona subject pool. Participants were instructed to abstain from alcohol, caffeine, and exercise on days of observational sessions. Participan ts were randomly assigned to a two (stress vs. control) and two (misinformation vs. no misinformation). On the first visit, the participants were engaged in a psychosocial stress induction (control task), after they were escorted to another(prenominal) room to few a negatively arousing slideshow. Participants returned forty-eight hours later to the lab to complete the second experimental visit. Upon arrival, the participants were told that they would be asked a series of questions, a totally of 60, relating to the slideshow the view previously two days ago. The questions for the misinformation condition had false information embedded as actual elements of the slideshow (e.g. What did the boy have in his hands? versus What did the boy have in his hands besides his lunch?). The questions were identical in the misinformed and non-misinformed groups to avoid inadvertently cuing one group with information that could potentially benefit the memory performance. The questions asked in this session were designed to expose the participants in the misinformation group to false information. Participants returned another forty-eight hours later after questioning, to complete the third and final experimental session, they were told that their memory of the slideshow would be tested. This was assessed using a recognition test that consisted of 136 questions, administered over a computer. The results showed that being under stress prior to encoding affects memory for a negative event by enhancing posterior memory. This finding supports the fancy that stress influences encoding of aversive events, although stress alone did not mark off misinformation endorsement. Participants were less likely to endorse misinformation for the most negatively-arousing portion of the slideshow if they were emphasise prior to encoding, and reported that they were aroused by the negative event. These participants had a more accurate memory for items that had been misinformed with the slidesho w phase. The results demonstrate that, in regards to eyewitness memory, arousal induced by an event, in combination with activations of a stressed state, result in an enhanced delirious memory that is less vulnerable to the incorporation of false details, disdain being undefendable to direct misleading information.Article twoThe goal of this study was to investigate how post-encoding stress will affect memory, depending on the thematic arousal of the initial learning period. Predicted that under high thematic arousal, post-learning stress would enhance memory for the central elements of an event, for example a cashbox grabbed by the burglar. Participants were recruited from Bielefeld University, 88 males, ages ranging from 19 to 37. The experiment consisted of four main stages, encoding of an event, usance of psychosocial stress, rehearsal of the event information and a recognition test for the event. The first stage consisted of the participants viewing a video-filmed event dep icting a burglary. Participants in the high arousal condition should have anticipated to see a distressing, possibily violent incident in the video shown. However those in the low arousal condition were exposed to an event that was unlikely to be as distressing. In second stage, after encoding has occurred, a stress manipulation was applied. About half of the participants were administered the Trier Social Stress Test, this induced psychosocial stress, the be participants were exposed to a non-stressful situation. In the third stage, the participants read a taradiddle description of the witnessed event, the description did however include items not shown in the pilot film event. In the final stage the participants were given a yes or no recognition test that contained items that did appear in the video and those that didnt. This study showed that eyewitnesses memory for an event was influenced by the combined effect of arousal during encoding and subsequent social stress, which w as not related to the event itself. The results indicate that eyewitnesses are likely to experience arousal during observation of an event, they also may be exposed to social stress shortly after, like during an interrogation for example. There was no evidence that thematic arousal and/or post-event stress affected the participants memory for false post-event information.It is shown that age can have an effect on an eyewitnesss reliability, children are prone to forget things or take into account misleading information and believe it is true. With that being said their credibility is often questioned. Results show that younger children are more prone to making mistakes, and verbalize someone is guilty, even when theyre not, overall young children are not as reliable. Being under stress at the time of an event can have an effect on memory, however it does not effect on an eyewitnesses memory of an event. These studies show that eyewitnesses are still able to recall the events that h appened, even after experiencing pre or post-event stress. At the end of the day, both can have an effect of the recall of information, and identifying the correct perpetrator.Reference ListEchterhoff, G., Wolf, O. (2012). The stressed eyewitness the interaction of thematic arousal and post-event stress in memory for central and peripheral event information. Front. Integr. Neurosci., 6. doi10.3389/fnint.2012.00057Hoscheidt, S., LaBar, K., Ryan, L., Jacobs, W., Nadel, L. (2014). Encoding negative events under stress High subjective arousal is related to accurate emotional memory despite misinformation exposure. Neurobiology Of Learning And Memory, 112, 237-247. doi10.1016/j.nlm.2013.09.008Pozzulo, J., Balfour, J. (2006). Childrens and adults eyewitness identification verity when a culprit changes his appearance Comparing simultaneous and elimination carte du jour procedures. Legal And Criminological Psychology, 11(1), 25-34. doi10.1348/13553250552626Spring, T., Saltzstein, H., P each, R. (2012). Childrens Eyewitness Identification as implicit in(predicate) Moral Decision-Making. Appl. Cognit. Psychol., 27(2), 139-149. doi10.1002/acp.2871