Testing the reflection assumption

Abstract

In the US, experts are often called upon to provide evidence during criminal trials regarding eyewitness identification research. A key factor is probative value: to what extent are findings from laboratory studies generalisable to the real world? In order to answer this question, this article explores the issue of eyewitness ecology, a term referring to the environmental context in which people witness crimes, which includes characteristics of perpetrators and the viewing conditions, as well as the identification context. Specifically, we explore the extent to which the typical eyewitness ecology found in laboratory studies reflects or is similar to real-world conditions. We coded the characteristics of the published literature on criminal identification in the laboratory (n = 309), and the results were compared to the characteristics of a stratified random sample of felony cases (n = 721) obtained from a large metropolitan district in the United States. This analysis demonstrated that in the criminal cases compared to the laboratory studies, duration of exposure to the culprit and retention interval length were significantly longer, and weapons, violence and showup identifications were more prevalent. Additionally, the laboratory studies and criminal cases differed with respect to participant/witness race. These findings indicate a need to broaden the range of conditions employed in the laboratory to increase the applicability of eyewitness identification research to the legal system.

Does presenting perpetrator and innocent suspect faces from different facial angles influence the susceptibility of eyewitness memory? An investigation into the misinformation effect and eyewitness misidentification

“…Like many other studies that adopt a lineup paradigm, a limitation of this research is the length of the distractor task – one minute. In real cases, the median average delay between witnessing a crime and being presented with a lineup is around 11 days in the United States ( Flowe et al, 2018 ), and 31 days in the United Kingdom ( Horry et al, 2012 ). Whilst this might seem concerning at face value, some studies have demonstrated that length of delay between encoding and test does not necessarily harm identification accuracy ( Valentine et al, 2012 ; Wetmore et al, 2015 ).…”

Examining the effects of negative emotion and interviewing procedure on eyewitness recall

“…The time-dependent nature of emotional memory is particularly relevant within applied memory contexts such as real-world criminal investigations because investigations take time. Police generally interview witnesses and/or administer lineups in the days, weeks, and months following an event (Christianson, 1992;Flowe et al, 2018).…”

“…The time‐dependent nature of emotional memory is particularly relevant within applied memory contexts such as real‐world criminal investigations because investigations take time. Police generally interview witnesses and/or administer lineups in the days, weeks, and months following an event (Christianson, 1992; Flowe et al, 2018). Together, the time‐dependency of emotional memory and the ecological validity of delayed retrieval suggest that the effects of emotional arousal observed within single‐session eyewitness studies may not reflect the emotional memory processes of real‐world forensic contexts.…”

Evidence for selective emotional memory enhancement in a mock witness paradigm.

“…In the current experiment, we sought to investigate the effects of negative emotion during encoding on subsequent eyewitness memory performance (i.e., lineup identification and recall). In light of recent discussions (e.g., Sauerland et al, 2016) regarding the potential importance of delay-both in theory (given the differential rates of decay for emotional vs. nonemotional memories; Yonelinas & Ritchey, 2015) and in practice (given the differential delays in laboratory studies vs. criminal investigations; Flowe et al, 2018)-we sought to take a closer look at the role of delay by documenting participants' memory either immediately or after a 1-week delay. Further, given the potential discontinuity between recognition and recall effects in this context (e.g., Houston et al, 2013), we chose to consider both modes of retrieval.…”

“…Second, real-world contexts often involve longer encoding-retrieval delays than are used in laboratory experiments (Flowe et al, 2018). In many criminal investigations, witnesses are asked to provide their accounts and/or make person identifications after considerable delays—possibly days, weeks, or months after an event (Christianson, 1992).…”