Eyewitness Testimony Is Always Not Accurate - Annotated Bibliography Example

Annotated Bibliography: Eyewitness testimony is always not accurate Name Professor Institution Course Date Annotated Bibliography: Eyewitness testimony is always not accurate Eakin, D. K., Schreiber, T. A., Sergent-Marshall, S. (2003). Misinformation effect in eyewitness memory: The presence and absence of memory impairment as a function of warning and misinformation accessibility. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29(5): 813-825. Retrieved 16th August 2013 from http://eakinmemorylab.psychology.msstate.edu/Eakinetal_2003.JEPLMC.pdf This academic journal intended for both students and practioners in the field of psychology or criminology. In this article journal Eakin, Schreiber and Sergent-Marshall conducted 5 experiments on their investigation on how disclose to false post event information impacts on individuals’ capability not to remember information from a witnessed incident. The authors single out retrieval blocking as one of the reasons why people are not able to remember what they saw at the crime scene. Retrieval blocking referred to the extent to which access to the initial details is spoilt as a result of obtaining the misinformation during the test. In every test these authors investigated memory employing the modified opposition experiment, which was developed to cut off retrieval-blocking outcomes. One rationale for carrying out experiment one in this article was to establish whether retrieval blocking impacts happen under conditions which are normally applied when researching misinformation impacts, i.e., at the time misinformation is provided a single occasion. The major outcomes of the experiments points out that when individuals get access to false post event information which contradicts the details of the observed incident. Additionally, when individuals are cautioned immediately concerning the existence of false information, they can work against retrieval-blocking impacts but merely if the misleading information is rather low in convenience. The authors discussed the outcomes based on the hypothetical suppression and retrieval-blocking hypothesis mechanism which can cancel out retrieval-blocking consequences in some cases. The misinformation impacts were decreased when individuals were cautioned right away showing that rehearsal might have resulted to the decrease at this point. Eakin, Schreiber, Sergent-Marshall (2003) believe that the most clear problem with eyewitness testimony take place when the consistency of their testimony is scrutinized. Furthermore to being an issue of clear practical importance, the examination of eyewitness memory bear a theoretical importance also, because it can improve researchers’ knowledge of fundamental memory practices related to acquisition, testing and retention. Eakin, Schreiber and are PhD holders and professors with the University of Kansas while Sergent-Marshall is a professor with Washington University. These authors have co-authored several studies touching on psychology and criminology. The authors acknowledge the call for further researches that adopt a more diverse social sampling. Megreya, A. M., & Burton, A. M. (2008). Matching faces to photographs: Poor performance in eyewitness memory (without the memory). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(4): 364–372. Retrieved 16th August 2013 from http://www.uni-saarland.de/fak5/excops/download/Megreya_Burton%282008%29.pdf This is an article of written for psychology students and professionals in the field of criminology. The article claims that eyewitness memory is recognized to be fallible and should be relied on for investigations. The two researches carried out three experiments aiming to determine baseline performance for establishment of unfamiliar faces. In experiment one, observers were exposed live photos or actors referred to as targets, and then instantaneously offered with a set of 10 faces called test items. When the observes were questioned whether the photo (target) was there amongst those test items, and if so to spot the individual, participants demonstrated poor levels of performance (nearly 70% correct). In addition, the experiment recorded no difference between direct memory for a person and the photograph. In experiment two, similar targets and faces (items) were provided concurrently and observers were requested to carry out a matching assignment. Once more, the outcome showed poor performance (about 68% correct), registering no difference between the photos and people. In their last experiment, observers were requested to match a living person to one photograph. Even with these status, the performance was still poor (c. 85%), without improvement over matching two photographs. The authors believe that challenges of eyewitness identification might involve complexities in original encoding of different faces, as well as the memory problems for the incident. This Psychology article has built its arguments on other scientific literature about eyewitness identification and warns the justice system of challenges with eyewitness identification proof. In the experiment the researchers established that individuals struggle to spot faces from photos or in person, a complexity emerging from the face encoding. When observers were offered a memory test from a set of a lineup or photos, they struggled to correctly recognize the pictures and had low identification. This finding provided a starting point for approximating the correctness of ' identification of eyewitness of others griped in a traumatic incident. Since courts depend on eyewitness facial identification, it is vital to admit that recognition is not always accurate. This article looks deeply on major developments regarding the manner in which different factors affect the precision of eyewitness identification. These factors consists of traits of the witness, attributes of the witnessed incident, and attributes of testimony, lineup instructions, lineup content and processes of testing. The article is written by experienced researchers who have co-authored several texts in the field of psychology. The author, Mike Burton, is a postdoctoral researcher of the University of Aberdeen. On the other, Ahmed Megreya is a Psychology researcher with Menoufia University. This is an outstanding article for student practicing psychology. Paterson, Helen M., Richard I. Kemp & Jodie R. (2011). Combating Co-Witness Contamination: Attempting to Decrease the Negative Effects of Discussion on Eyewitness Memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(5): 43–52. This applied psychology article published by The British Psychology Society intended to bring out multidisciplinary studies that discuss how a case can be distorted by many witnesses: A Thematic Approach will confirm invaluable for students of psychology who are also passionate about criminology and the law. These researchers conducted two experiments to found out whether this memory conventionality also takes place in the based on an interview and whether it could possible to decrease the impact. Observers watched a crime-video which they later conferred with their co-witness. Some observers were cautioned they might have access to misinformation at the time of the conversation before the researchers could interview all of them individually. In experiment one; observers remembered the judgments concerning each factor of their free recall while in the experiment two they were told to point out the basis of their memories. Co-witness information was included into observers' statement, and this impact could not be considerably reduced by using source-monitoring instruction and warnings. The researchers thus resolved that when witnesses discuss about an incident they may end up concurring on a false narrative. Study has established that 71 percent of witnesses altered their testimony accounts to comprise of false elements which their co-witnesses recalled. This makes the case very tricky to rebuild the real account of an incident. The article also gives a recommendation that, to stop this outcome, police ought to disconnect the witnesses early enough prior to giving an account of the incident. Unfortunately this can be very difficult, particularly if the police force is not involved right away after the incident. Police force ought to notify witnesses of the likelihood of distortion as early as possible. It appears like once the witnesses come across misinformation, particularly wrong information conveyed by their co-witness, they are likely to include this wrong information into their memory. The authors also suggest that witnesses must be interviewed earlier with police taking into account if these witnesses have shared their testimonies. After the testimonies have been documented, police must take notes on the similarities or differences which could point out faulted facts or details. The authors are individuals having a good knowledge and experience in the field of psychology. Dr Helen Paterson has made important contributions in the area of psychology with her research focusing on the impacts of discussion among witnesses on the precision of their personal memories. Dr Helen is a postdoctoral researcher with The University of Sydney working on ARC Linkage Project. Richard Kemp is a forensic psychology and an associate professor of psychology at The University of New South Wales in Australia. References Eakin, D. K., Schreiber, T. A. & Sergent-Marshall, S. (2003). Misinformation effect in Eyewitness memory: The presence and absence of memory impairment as a function of warning and misinformation accessibility. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29(5): 813-825. Retrieved from http://eakinmemorylab.psychology.msstate.edu/Eakinetal_2003.JEPLMC.pdf Paterson, Helen M., Richard I. Kemp & Jodie, R. Ng (2011). Combating Co-Witness Contamination: Attempting to Decrease the Negative Effects of Discussion on Eyewitness Memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(5): 43–52. Megreya, A. M. & Burton, A. M. (2008). Matching faces to photographs: Poor performance in eyewitness memory (without the memory). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(4): 364–372. 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