Information about expert decision and post-decision distortion of facts of own decision.

Cognitive representations of decision problems are dynamic. During and after a decision, evaluations and representations of facts change to support the decision made by a decision maker her- or himself (Svenson, 2003). We investigated post-decision distortion of facts (consolidation). Participants were given vignettes with facts about two terminally ill patients, only one of whom could be given lifesaving surgery. In Study 1, contrary to the prediction, the results showed that facts were distorted after a decision both by participants who were responsible for the decisions themselves and when doctors had made the decision. In Study 2 we investigated the influence of knowledge about expert decisions on a participant's own decision and post-decisional distortion of facts. Facts were significantly more distorted when the participant's decision agreed with an expert's decision than when the participant and expert decisions disagreed. The findings imply that knowledge about experts' decisions can distort memories of facts and therefore may obstruct rational analyses of earlier decisions. This is particularly important when a decision made by a person, who is assumed to be an expert, makes a decision that is biased or wrong.

Brief Report: Autism in the Courtroom: Experiences of Legal Professionals and the Autism Community.

Online surveys were used to sample the views of judges, barristers and solicitors (n = 33) about their engagement with autistic individuals in criminal courts in England and Wales. Despite an understanding of some of the difficulties experienced by individuals with autism, and the adjustments suitable for supporting them, legal professionals reported constraints arising from a lack of understanding by others within the criminal justice system. These results are considered alongside the views and perspectives of autistic adults (n = 9) and parents of children on the autism spectrum (n = 19), who had encountered the criminal courts as witnesses or defendants and were largely dissatisfied with their experiences. Training, understanding and the provision of appropriate adjustments were identified as key issues by all respondent groups.

Stress, stress-induced cortisol responses, and eyewitness identification performance.

In the eyewitness identification literature, stress and arousal at the time of encoding are considered to adversely influence identification performance. This assumption is in contrast with findings from the neurobiology field of learning and memory, showing that stress and stress hormones are critically involved in forming enduring memories. This discrepancy may be related to methodological differences between the two fields of research, such as the tendency for immediate testing or the use of very short (1-2 hours) retention intervals in eyewitness research, while neurobiology studies insert at least 24 hours. Other differences refer to the extent to which stress-responsive systems (i.e., the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) are stimulated effectively under laboratory conditions. The aim of the current study was to conduct an experiment that accounts for the contemporary state of knowledge in both fields. In all, 123 participants witnessed a live staged theft while being exposed to a laboratory stressor that reliably elicits autonomic and glucocorticoid stress responses or while performing a control task. Salivary cortisol levels were measured to control for the effectiveness of the stress induction. One week later, participants attempted to identify the thief from target-present and target-absent line-ups. According to regression and receiver operating characteristic analyses, stress did not have robust detrimental effects on identification performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. © 2016 The Authors Behavioral Sciences & the Law Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Experiences of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Policing in England and Wales: Surveying Police and the Autism Community.

An online survey gathered the experiences and views of 394 police officers (from England and Wales) regarding autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Just 42 % of officers were satisfied with how they had worked with individuals with ASD and reasons for this varied. Although officers acknowledged the need for adjustments, organisational/time constraints were cited as barriers. Whilst 37 % of officers had received training on ASD, a need for training tailored to policing roles (e.g., frontline officers, detectives) was identified. Police responses are discussed with respect to the experiences of the ASD community (31 adults with ASD, 49 parents), who were largely dissatisfied with their experience of the police and echoed the need for police training on ASD.

The development of differential mnemonic effects of false denials and forced confabulations.

The current experiment was designed to assess the mnemonic consequences of false denials and forced confabulations. Children (aged 6-8 and 10-12 years) and adults viewed a video and then their memory and belief about the event were tested. Participants were then divided into three groups. In the "cued recall" condition, participants were asked to answer true- and false-event questions, but could choose not to respond if they did not know the answer. In the "forced confabulation" group, participants received the same set of questions, but were forced to answer all of them. In the "false denial" group, participants were instructed to falsely deny in response to each question. One week later, participants received a source memory test, and they had to provide memory and belief ratings once more. Forced confabulations resulted in false memories in the youngest group. Moreover, our analyses showed that repeated false denials led children and adults to be highly inclined to falsely deny that they had talked to the experimenter about certain presented details, when in fact they had done so. Furthermore, false denial and non-believed memory rates were more pronounced in younger than in older children and adults. Our results imply that denying experienced events is not a good strategy in an interviewing setting, as it adversely affects memory statements about the interview.

Enhancing older adults' eyewitness memory for present and future events with the Self-Administered Interview.

Older adults' memory reports are often less complete and accurate than those by younger adults. The current study assessed the suitability of the Self-Administered Interview (SAI) as retrieval support for older eyewitnesses, and examines whether experience with the SAI leads to improved performance on subsequent events where the SAI is not used. Participants recalled an event with the SAI or free recall instructions. After 1 week, all participants watched a second event and freely recalled its content. SAI participants reported more correct details for the initial event, and a "transfer" of the initial recall advantage to the second event was observed.

The cognitive interview buffers the effects of subsequent repeated questioning in the absence of negative feedback.

The Cognitive Interview (CI) is known to elicit high-quality information from cooperative witnesses. The present study examined whether the CI protects against two suggestive interview techniques: repeated questioning and negative feedback. Young adults (n = 98) watched one of two crime videos and were interviewed with either a CI or free recall. One week later, a second interviewer asked answerable questions (about information in the video) and unanswerable questions (about information not in the video). Half of the participants received negative feedback about their performance. All participants were then asked the questions a second time. The CI resulted in more correct responses to answerable questions and fewer errors to unanswerable questions at the first questioning. The CI produced the highest consistency for answerable questions in the face of repeated questioning in the absence of negative feedback, and resulted in the most changes in responses to answerable questions when negative feedback was applied. No effects were found for unanswerable questions. The CI protected against repeated questioning, but only in the absence of negative feedback.

Misreporting signs of child abuse: the role of decision-making and outcome information.

Two studies provided evidence that a decision to report an ambiguous case of child abuse affected subsequent memory of the case information, such that participants falsely recognized details that were not presented in the original information, but that are schematically associated with child abuse. Moreover, post-decision information that the child had later died from abuse influenced the memory reports of participants who had chosen not to report the case, increasing their reports of false schema-consistent details. This suggests that false decision-consistent memories are primarily due to sense-making, schematic processing rather than the motivation to justify the decision. The present findings points to an important mechanism by which decision information can become distorted in retrospect, and emphasize the difficulties of improving future decision-making by contemplating past decisions. The results also indicate that decisions may generate false memories in the apparent absence of external suggestion or misleading information. Implications for decision-making theory, and applied practices are discussed.

Are two interviews better than one? eyewitness memory across repeated cognitive interviews.

Eyewitnesses to a filmed event were interviewed twice using a Cognitive Interview to examine the effects of variations in delay between the repeated interviews (immediately & 2 days; immediately & 7 days; 7 & 9 days) and the identity of the interviewers (same or different across the two repeated interviews). Hypermnesia (an increase in total amount of information recalled in the repeated interview) occurred without any decrease in the overall accuracy. Reminiscence (the recall of new information in the repeated interview) was also found in all conditions but was least apparent in the longest delay condition, and came with little cost to the overall accuracy of information gathered. The number of errors, increased across the interviews, but the relative accuracy of participants' responses was unaffected. However, when accuracy was calculated based on all unique details provided across both interviews and compared to the accuracy of recall in just the first interview it was found to be slightly lower. The identity of the interviewer (whether the same or different across interviews) had no effects on the number of correct details. There was an increase in recall of new details with little cost to the overall accuracy of information gathered. Importantly, these results suggest that witnesses are unlikely to report everything they remember during a single Cognitive Interview, however exhaustive, and a second opportunity to recall information about the events in question may provide investigators with additional information.

Expert testimony on eyewitness evidence: in search of common sense.

Surveys on knowledge of eyewitness issues typically indicate that legal professionals and jurors alike can be insensitive to factors that are detrimental to eyewitness accuracy. One aim of the current research was to assess the extent to which judges, an under-represented sample in the extant literature, are aware of factors that may undermine the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness evidence (Study 1). We also sought to assess the knowledge of a jury-eligible sample of the general public (drawn from the same population as the judges) and compared responses from a multiple choice survey with a scenario-based, response-generation survey in order to investigate whether questionnaire format alters the accuracy of responses provided (Study 2). Overall, judges demonstrated a reasonable level of knowledge regarding general eyewitness memory issues. Further, the jury-eligible general public respondents completing a multiple choice format survey produced more responses consistent with experts than did participants who were required to generate their own responses. The results are discussed in terms of the future training requirements for legal professionals and the ability of jurors to apply the knowledge they have to the legal context.

Verbal description benefits for faces when description conditions are unknown a priori.

Some prior research has shown a benefit for describing nonverbal study stimuli, particularly faces, on a later recognition test relative to a control (no description) condition. In such studies, participants have known a priori whether a stimulus will need to be described, meaning that encoding differences other than the description could account for the effect. In Experiment 1, a description benefit was obtained for faces that could not be attributed to encoding differences. A direct manipulation of description duration, thus allowing more time to produce descriptors, did not influence the description effect. In Experiment 2, visual rehearsal instructions (without any verbal descriptions) failed to produce a rehearsal benefit. The experiments provide direct evidence against an account where the description or rehearsal enhances the featural information of nonverbal representations. For the present results, a benefit stemming from the encoding and retrieval of descriptors appears to be an attractive theoretical alternative over one that posits an enhancement or alteration of featural or holistic information.

Recall of a live and personally experienced eyewitness event by adults with autism spectrum disorder.

The aim of the present study was to (a) extend previous eyewitness research in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a live and personally experienced event; (b) examine whether witnesses with ASD demonstrate a facilitative effect in memory for self- over other-performed actions; (c) explore source monitoring abilities by witnesses with ASD in discriminating who performed which actions within the event. Eighteen high-functioning adults with ASD and 18 age- and IQ-matched typical counterparts participated in a live first aid scenario in which they and the experimenter each performed a number of actions. Participants were subsequently interviewed for their memory of the event using a standard interview procedure with free recall followed by questioning. The ASD group recalled just as many correct details as the comparison group from the event overall, however they made more errors. This was the case across both free recall and questioning phases. Both groups showed a self-enactment effect across both interview phases, recalling more actions that they had performed themselves than actions that the experimenter had performed. However, the ASD group were more likely than their typical comparisons to confuse the source of self-performed actions in free recall, but not in questioning, which may indicate executive functioning difficulties with unsupported test procedures. Findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.

The emotional eyewitness: the effects of emotion on specific aspects of eyewitness recall and recognition performance.

The present set of experiments aimed to investigate the effects of negative emotion on specific aspects of eyewitness recall and recognition performance. The experience of emotion was manipulated between subjects, with participants either viewing a crime scenario (a mugging) or a neutral scenario (a conversation). Eyewitness recall was categorized into descriptions of the perpetrator, critical incident, victim, and environmental details. The completeness and accuracy of eyewitness recall across categories of detail were measured in Experiment 1. A significant main effect of negative emotion was found for the completeness of recall. Furthermore, a significant main effect of the completeness of eyewitness statements was found, but not for their accuracy. However, these main effects were qualified by a significant interaction between emotion and category of detail recalled. Specifically, emotional participants provided a more complete description of the perpetrator than neutral participants; however, they were less able than their neutral counterparts to describe what the perpetrator did to the victim. In light of these findings, Experiment 2 investigated whether enhanced completeness of perpetrator descriptions during recall translated into an enhanced ability to recognize the perpetrator from a photographic lineup by emotional compared with neutral participants. Results from Experiment 2 suggest that while emotional participants again provide a more complete description of the perpetrator, they are less able than their neutral counterparts to recognize the perpetrator from a photographic lineup. Results are discussed in terms of a retrieval motivation hypothesis of negative emotional experience and the possible consequences for eyewitness testimony.

Predictors of eyewitness identification decisions from video lineups in England: a field study.

Eyewitness identification decisions from 1,039 real lineups in England were analysed. Identification procedures have undergone dramatic change in the United Kingdom over recent years. Video lineups are now standard procedure, in which each lineup member is seen sequentially. The whole lineup is seen twice before the witness can make a decision, and the witness can request additional viewings of the lineup. A key aim of this paper was to investigate the association between repeated viewing and eyewitness decisions. Repeated viewing was strongly associated with increased filler identification rates, suggesting that witnesses who requested additional viewings were more willing to guess. In addition, several other factors were associated with lineup outcomes, including the age difference between the suspect and the witness, the type of crime committed, and delay. Overall, the suspect identification rate was 39%, the filler identification rate was 26% and the lineup rejection rate was 35%.

Reducing misinformation effects in older adults with cognitive interview mnemonics.

We examined the effect of a prior Modified Cognitive Interview on young and older adults' recall of a short film of a staged crime and subsequent reporting of misinformation. Participants viewed the film followed the next day by misinformation presented in a postevent summary. They were then interviewed with either a Modified Cognitive Interview or a control interview followed by a recognition memory test. A Modified Cognitive Interview elicited more correct details and improved overall accuracy compared to a control interview in both age groups, although the young adults recollected three times more correct information in a Modified Cognitive Interview than the older adults. In both age groups, correct recollections of person and action details were higher in a Modified Cognitive Interview than a control interview. Importantly, older adults who were interviewed with a Modified Cognitive Interview were not susceptible to misinformation effects.

Social influence in televised election debates: a potential distortion of democracy.

A recent innovation in televised election debates is a continuous response measure (commonly referred to as the "worm") that allows viewers to track the response of a sample of undecided voters in real-time. A potential danger of presenting such data is that it may prevent people from making independent evaluations. We report an experiment with 150 participants in which we manipulated the worm and superimposed it on a live broadcast of a UK election debate. The majority of viewers were unaware that the worm had been manipulated, and yet we were able to influence their perception of who won the debate, their choice of preferred prime minister, and their voting intentions. We argue that there is an urgent need to reconsider the simultaneous broadcast of average response data with televised election debates.

Inoculation or antidote? The effects of cognitive interview timing on false memory for forcibly fabricated events.

This study examined whether a cognitive interview (CI) can counteract the effects of suggestive interviews involving forced fabrication. College students witnessed a filmed event and were later forced to fabricate answers to misleading questions about the event. All witnesses were interviewed with a non-leading CI or free recall (FR) either before or after the forced fabrication phase. A week later participants completed a recognition and source monitoring (SM) test of video content. Relative to FR, the CI administered before the forced fabrication interview increased reports of correct details and reduced false assents to fabricated items. A CI after resulted in false memory rates comparable to the FR group. Early interviews using CI techniques may protect against memory loss and misinformation effects.

The influence of face age on identification from a video line-up: a comparison between older and younger adults.

A group of young-adult (aged 18-35 years) and older-adult witnesses (aged 61-83 years) viewed films of two similar staged thefts, one that depicted a young culprit and the other an older culprit. After a short delay of 40-60 minutes participants were presented with two separate video line-ups, one for each target. In one line-up the target was present (TP) and the other the target was absent (TA). Older adults performed more poorly in target present and absent line-ups, and showed no own-age bias, however young adults showed an own age advantage for the TA line-ups.

The effects of social influence on children's memory reports: the omission and commission error asymmetry.

Children in two age groups (7 vs. 12 yrs, N= 174) individually interacted with a stranger and were later interviewed about this event. Right before the interview, each child encountered the stranger once again and he engaged in a conversation where he either suggested that a (central or peripheral) detail originally present in the event had actually not been there or that an originally non-present (central or peripheral) detail had in fact been there. It was hypothesized that the two types of misinformation would result in omission and commission errors respectively. The results showed that the social influence resulted in an asymmetric effect (i.e., more commission than omission errors). Importantly, we also found that the children made more errors with respect to the peripheral detail (a suitcase), compared to the central detail (a passenger). Younger children did not make more errors (neither omission nor commission errors) than older children.