1. Encoding Specificity Memory is improved when information available at encoding is also available at retrieval

2. Tulving (1983) People encode the context with the target material Physical match (class, diving, smell) Emotional match (happy, depressed) Understanding match (childhood amnesia, under the influence of drugs match)

3. Improving Memory Use mnemonics Use elaboration to make the material meaningful Activate retrieval cues Minimize interference Sleep more Test your knowledge, both to rehearse it and to determine what you do not yet know.

4. Overlearning: newly acquired skills should be practiced well beyond the point of initial mastery, leading to automaticity. Massed v. Distributive Practice: –Ebbinghaus: "with any considerable number of repetitions a suitable distribution of them over a space of time is decidedly more advantageous than the massing of them at a single time"

5. The problems with eyewitness identification

6. Remember this person!

7. Simultaneous lineup and Relative judgment

8. The option? Sequential Lineup Number of possible photos unknown. Decision: Yes or No to each photo. Witness may NOT return to previous photo. Absolute Judgment Process provides better protection of innocents.

14. This is the person

15. Perception interpretation of information Attention & Memory as a By-Product Post-event Distortion Some problematic features of the human perceiver and eyewitness.

16. Post-event Distortion –Factors Arising Before ID Heuristics: Availability, Causal scenarios, Vividness Composites and artist’s sketches Information from others Prior observations or photos of lineup members

17. Factors Arising Between ID and Testimony Feedback about ID from investigators and media Additional information from others and media Compliance & conformity to others

18. Can we distinguish accurate from inaccurate identifiers? State of the “trace” should be revealed in aspects of the decision process; There are a number of “identification behaviors” that, from a statistical point of view, do predict accuracy. For example; –Decision speed (RT): The faster the choice, the more likely the ID is correct BUT no rule of thumb (e.g. 10-12 s) –Confidence: While accuracy & confidence are not well correlated, decisions accompanied by the very highest rating (taken at the time of ID) are often more likely to be correct.

19. Eyewitness testimony Loftus -- subjects watched a video of a car accident and then were asked “how fast was the car going when it” Smashed 40.8 Collided 39.3 Bumped 38.1 Hit 34.0 Contacted 31.8

20. Leading questions may bias the estimates the questions may literally change the way people remember the event Exp 2: Subjects saw the video and were asked “Smashed” or “hit” Smashed est'd mph > Hit estd mph

21. 1 Week subjects were later asked “did you see any broken glass”? Most answered “no” correctly, but –32% said yes if asked “Smashed” –14% said yes if asked “hit” –12% said yes in control group The memory of the video and the question were fused together into one memory

23. As time increased the memory was integrated so that subjects couldn’t distinguish the event from effects of questioning Typical eyewitness testimony: – Occurs after long interval from event – After repeated questioning – After repeated retellings

24. Q: How reliable is eyewitness testimony? A: Difficult to know for sure, but people can’t distinguish between “real events” and “reconstructed memories” – Implications for “recovered memories” & legal system –Should eyewitness testimony by itself be considered sufficient to establish guilt?

25. More to consider… Bias - The tendency for knowledge, beliefs, and feelings to distort recollection of previous experiences and to affect current and future judgments and memory. Source amnesia (source misattribution):

26. The Innocence Project reports that 25% of wrongful convictions involve faulty eyewitness testimony, as distinguished from identification error. The strengths and weaknesses of human observers extend to many other types of testimony about events and people: –Recollection of contexts, times, and dates, voices, conversations, inferences, and personal interactions, –Recollection of other physical features, actions and their order, and patterns of movement among people. To date, few guidelines (e.g. interviewing) have been drawn up as to how best to assess these kinds of testimony. Not all false eyewitness testimony is about person identification…