Effects of Detailed Imagery on Simulated Witness Recall; Racial and Gender Issues in Facial Recognition; Eyewitness Memory and Time of Day; Phenomenal Causality in Eyewitness Report (From Psychology and Law: International Perspectives, P 302-327, 1992, Friedrich Losel, Doris Bender, et al., eds. --

• NCJ Number: 148246
• Author(s): D A Bekerian; J L Dennett; K Hill; R Hitchcock; N L Jalbert; J Getting; M Diges; M E Rubio; M C Rodriguez; K Dahmen-Zimmer; M Kraus
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 26 pages
• Sale Source: Walter de Gruyter & Co
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: Germany (Unified)

Annotation

Several studies were conducted to explore the effects of detailed imagery on simulated witness recall, racial and gender issues in facial recognition, the effect of time of day on eyewitness memory, and the veracity of eyewitness reports.

Abstract

The first study found that instructions encouraging people to image increased total recall but that these effects were equivalent across correct and incorrect information. In other words, imagery increased the amount of correct and incorrect information recalled by a subject. Results of the second study indicated that cross-racial identifications were more difficult and therefore perhaps less reliable than same race identifications. The third study determined that time of day had a significant effect on eyewitness memory. Eyewitnesses in the morning had higher recall scores than eyewitnesses in the evening. The final study showed that observers of an ambiguous social event could be induced to perceive physical causal relations that were not actually present. 65 references, 6 tables, and 1 figure