Earwitness testimony Matt Jarvis

Earwitness testimony The benefits of earwitness testimony There has been a lot of research into the accuracy of eyewitness memory — less so with earwitness memory However, there are some situations in which earwitness would be expected to recall more information Such as when a criminal is wearing a mask…

Earwitness testimony Difficulties with voice identification The same voice varies over time and between situations Criminals often deliberately disguise their voice There may be considerable time between the event and the identification Both criminal and witness will be under stress during the event

Earwitness testimony Laboratory procedures Procedures are similar to an eyewitness line-up Participants listen to a spoken word or sentence There is a delay, from minutes to days Participants attempt to identify the voice from a selection

Earwitness testimony Findings It was expected that voice identification would have similar accuracy to a visual line-up method (55–60%) However, it was much lower. Accurate identification only took place 9–28%, depending on the number of voices to choose from

Earwitness testimony Explaining the findings There may not be enough context information to access a remembered voice Evidence for Recognition gets better when a voice is presented with a face at both learning and recognition Evidence against Voice recognition is no better or worse when a face is presented just at learning

Earwitness testimony Conclusions Earwitness memory is significantly less accurate than eyewitness memory We are currently unsure why this is or how to improve its accuracy Currently earwitness testimony has credibility in the court system This may result in miscarriages of justice More research is urgently needed in this area