Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness Testimony - Related Videos
07:02
Measuring Children's Trust in Testimony
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2023
Source: Laboratories of Judith Danovitch and Nicholaus Noles—University of Louisville How does a person learn about the world around them? One way is through direct observation and exploration. However, not every piece of information can be observed firsthand. Instead, a person must often rely on other people as information sources. This is particularly true for children who have so many questions about the world around them, yet have limited means of accessing the answers. Thus, children must...
01:22
Eyewitness Memory
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2025
Eyewitness memory refers to the recollection of events by someone who has directly witnessed them, often serving as critical evidence in legal settings. This type of memory is commonly used in criminal cases where a witness describes details like a suspect's appearance, clothing, or behavior during a crime. However, despite its perceived reliability, eyewitness memory is prone to significant errors. One such error is memory distortion, which occurs because human memory does not function like a...
09:49
Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm
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Cited by 3 •
2015
This applied experimental paradigm replicates circumstances by which an eyewitness to a real crime may create a holistic facial composite of the culprit from memory, and then attempt to identify the culprit from a video line-up containing the culprit or one in which he or she is not present.
07:36
An Experimental Analysis of Children's Ability to Provide a False Report about a Crime
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Cited by 2 •
2016
The current methodology is designed to provide an ecologically relevant approach for measuring the veracity, length and quality of children's true and false testimonies. Implications of the current methodology for future research and professionals who interview children will also be discussed.
02:20
Routes of Persuasion
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2020
Persuasion is the process of changing our attitude toward something based on some kind of communication. Much of the persuasion we experience comes from outside forces. How do people convince others to change their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors? What communications do you receive that attempt to persuade you to change your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors? Yale Attitude Change Approach The topic of persuasion has been one of the most extensively researched areas in social psychology...
FAQs
Recall reflects several linked memory processes rather than a single mental event. Attention and perception determine which aspects of an incident are noticed and encoded. Storage preserves information over time, while retrieval reconstructs it when a person later reports what happened. Examining these stages helps psychologists identify where errors may arise and evaluate the reliability of an account.
Stress, delay, and questioning can influence recall in different ways. Stress may affect the initial processing of an event, delay gives memory more time to change, and questioning can shape what a witness reports. Studying these conditions allows psychologists to separate problems associated with observation from changes that emerge during later remembering.
Exposure to other accounts creates a risk of suggestion-related error because information encountered after an event can influence later recall. A witness’s report may therefore reflect not only the original observation but also subsequent questioning or accounts from others. This mechanism makes post-event information an important variable when psychologists assess testimony in experiments or investigations.
Controlled experiments let psychologists examine eyewitness memory under defined conditions, while field research studies the same issues in investigative settings. Using both approaches connects evidence about attention, perception, storage, and retrieval with the circumstances in which accounts are actually collected. Together, they support a more complete assessment of reliability than either laboratory or field evidence alone.
Lineup and interview procedures provide structured ways to study how witnesses identify potential perpetrators and describe events. Psychologists can use them to examine how retrieval occurs and whether questioning or other accounts introduce suggestion-related errors. These procedures are relevant both to controlled research and investigative practice because they focus on how evidence is elicited, not only on what is remembered.
In legal investigations, an account can help reconstruct an event and identify potential perpetrators, but psychologists emphasize that its reliability must be evaluated. Findings about attention, perception, memory storage and retrieval, stress, delay, questioning, and exposure to other accounts inform that evaluation. This research helps courts consider eyewitness evidence in light of the conditions under which it was produced.