Change Blindness Ecstasy

Eyewitness evidence has always been considering critical information when it comes to court trials and convictions. But how reliable are eyewitnesses? Scientific research has shown that eyewitness’s memories are often not accurate or reliable. Human memory is very malleable and is easily changed by suggestion. Relying on eyewitness evidence instead of scientific data often leads to wrongful convictions. Scientific evidence is much more reliable, and should be more important in court cases than eyewitness evidence.

Outline and evaluate research into the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of eye witness testimony.

Eyewitness testimony is a hot button issue in not only the criminal justice field but also the psychology field as well. It continues to be argued that this type of “evidence” is far too unreliable for the court room and can ultimately end up punishing the wrong person for a crime they did not commit. The influence of an eyewitness testimony cannot be denied as research has showed that, “adding a single prosecution eyewitness to a murder trial summary increased the percentage of mock jurors’ guilty verdicts from 18 to 72” (Leippe, Manion, & Romanczyk, p. 182, 1992). In the article discussed here, researchers will look into various age groups to see if age has an effect on the credibility of eyewitness testimonies while attempting to discern what certain cues build upon such credibility.

Eyewitness misidentification can pose a serious threat in forensic evidence. Eye witness testimony can easily be tampered with due to words or phrases used. Bias is a major issue in identification especially if the police officer uses suggestive tones to portray whom they believe is the suspect. Some witnesses will change their opinion when they hear new information of the suspect. A study has shown that words can play a major impact in the witness' mind and cause them to recall false information. False information can also stem from human memory, age, distance, and how long it took before a witness could recall the information. It has been shown that due to the confidence that a witness may have, it could impact the court systems' reliability on the witness; however, there are several solutions that can be done to prevent misidentification in the court of law. Some examples that can be done are blind administration, lineup composition, instructions, confidence statements, and

In the late 19th-century research on eyewitness, testimony memory began, psychologists had been studying memory, and the findings became useful for forensic psychology and law. A central issue with studying eyewitness memory and testimony is the ecological validity of lab studies. There are relatively few ‘real world’ eyewitness memory studies, and that causes problems for determining the generalizability of findings in eyewitness memory. Coined by Wells (1978) estimator variables are present at the time of a crime and cannot be changed (i.e. witness characteristics and the type of offence) and system variables are factors that can be manipulated to affect eyewitness accuracy (i.e. line-up procedures and interview types). The system variables

To make more people aware of these issues Wells, Memon, and Penrod (2006), evaluated the reasons why eyewitness accounts are sometimes regarded as lacking in external validity. These include: weapon focus, stress, errors in police investigations and lineups. Other issues also include change blindness, and unconscious transference/mistaken bystander effect.

As time goes on, eyewitness testimony has become more and more of a disputed topic due to many different factors. The first study I was exposed to was in an introductory psychology class which sparked my interest into the topic. For this reason, I chose to look at different demographics such as, gender and major, and see if those factors had any impact on the perception of eyewitness testimony. My main issues remained the same throughout this research project.

Change blindness is a phenomenon in attention where drastic changes to a scene can go unnoticed. This is important to the field of Human Sensation and Perception because it helps illustrate how a visual scene is processed. Specifically it shows how even if there is direct attention to a scene, there are times when drastic changes can occur without perception of the change occurring. With extensive research already conducted illustrating this effect, new research has recently been conducted studying different types of scene changes in the hopes of understanding which changes are easier or harder to notice. The results of these studies were quantified by the measurement of change detection time (usually reported in seconds). This subset of change blindness research has far-reaching practical applications, especially in the field of security and law enforcement. By applying the knowledge of which type of stimuli lead to longer change detection times training programs could be developed that allow this population to improve their observation skills.

Eyewitness identifications is a noteworthy topic. Victims see their attackers from time to time, but

There are many factors to consider when psychologists and scientists are trying to figure out reliability of eyewitness testimony. The ability to recall or

The impact of eyewitness testimony upon the members of a jury has been the subject of various research projects and has guided the policies formed by the federal government regarding its competent use in criminal matters (Wells, Malpass, Lindsay, Fisher, Turtle, & Fulero, 2000). Therefore, eyewitness studies are important to understand how

Have you ever been a witness to a crime? Would you feel comfortable if prosecutors relied on your eye witness testimony alone for a conviction? According to “The Magic of the Mind”, eyewitness testimony which relies on the accuracy of human memory, has an enormous impact on the outcome of a trial. Eyewitness testimony is a legal term. During an eyewitness testimony, the witness usually goes into an account of the crime he or she has witnessed. This can include details of the crime or identification of perpetrators. Eyewitness testimony is an important area of research in cognitive psychology and human memory (simplypsychology.com). Eyewitness testimony can be affected by many psychological factors such as:

“Wrongfully convicted at age 25, Calvin Johnson received a life sentence for the rape of a Georgia woman after four different women identified him. Exonerated in 1999, he walked out of prison a 41-year old man. The true rapist has never been found, (The Justice Project).” Eyewitness testimony is highly relied on by judges, but it can not always be trusted. Approximately 48% of wrong convictions are because of mistaken identity by eyewitnesses (The Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony). After we discovered this information, we became curious as to whether in a testimony, the eyewitness’ memory is more reliable after a short period of time or after a longer period of time? According to previous experiments, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Likely, we want to know if a testimony that is given two to three hours after a crime has taken place is more reliable than a testimony given after a longer period of time.

The subtle difference in the scene goes to show that we don’t pay that much attention to the background details. We believe that our senses and perceptions don’t fault us, but this small example shows that we are all victims to different phenomena such as change blindness. Change blindness is a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when there is a change in a visual stimulus but we do not notice this change. Change blindness along with other phenomena demonstrates that our cognitive faculties are not perfect; humans are not perfect, we are prone to error. This is also reflected in the criminal justice processes. One of the biggest areas where fallacies tend to occur is during witness testimony. Eyewitnesses are prone to change blindness because the amount of information they need to recall. If there was high activity, the offender happened to be wearing a disguise, or if they used any weapons or tools can cause a lot of confusion for eyewitnesses. It become more chaotic if there are multiple

One failure of awareness that seems to have a connection with traffic accidents is change blindness. Rensink (2002) proposed that change blindness occurs when a change within the scene goes unnoticed, due to the inability or difficulty to detect it. Resink (2002) also explained that change blindness can take place during a disruption in vision, such as an eye- movement or a blink.