Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony - A Psychological Perspective (From Psychology of the Courtroom, P 119-168, 1983, Norbert L Kerr and Robert M Bray, ed. - See NCJ-89761)

• NCJ Number: 89765
• Author(s): S Penrod; E Loftus; J Winkler
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 50 pages
• Sale Source: Academic Press, Inc
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article reviews the literature on eyewitness reliability, particularly regarding the basic processes of human memory and their relationships to eyewitness reliability, facial recognition, and the eyewitnesses' role in the legal system.

Abstract

The authors discuss the many sources of unreliability affecting the acquisition, retention, and retrieval of witnesses' material. These sources include stimulus events (e.g., exposure time, event complexity, event stressfulness), witness factors (e.g., expectations, information processing strategies), the length of the retention interval, distortion and changes in memory occurring over time, question biases, and lineup instruction biases. They also examine studies dealing with eyewitness activities related to suspect identification (e.g., photo spreads, mug shots, facial composites) and evaluate several possible means of improving or extending eyewitness performance, including use of different modes of questioning, hypnosis, and lie detectors. About 250 references are cited.