Police Officers' Perceptions of Eyewitness Performance in Forensic Investigations

Kebbell, Mark Rhys; Milne, Rebecca

doi:10.1080/00224549809600384

Cited by 162 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

109

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Indeed, a majority of police officers agree that witness statements often provide major leads for an investigation (Coupe & Griffiths, 1996;Kebbell & Milne, 1998). However, memory is fallible, and eyewitnesses are often unable to recall sufficient details regarding important forensic details such as person descriptors (Kebbell & Milne, 1998).…”

Section: Self-administered Interviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting eyewitness evidence: Examining the efficacy of a self-administered interview tool.

Gabbert¹,

Hope²,

Fisher³

2009

Law and Human Behavior

190

304

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Given the crucial role of eyewitness evidence, statements should be obtained as soon as possible after an incident. This is not always achieved due to demands on police resources. Two studies trace the development of a new tool, the Self-Administered Interview (SAI), designed to elicit a comprehensive initial statement. In Study 1, SAI participants reported more correct details than participants who provided a free recall account, and performed at the same level as participants given a Cognitive Interview. In Study 2, participants viewed a simulated crime and half recorded their statement using the SAI. After a delay of 1 week, all participants completed a free recall test. SAI participants recalled more correct details in the delayed recall task than control participants.

show abstract

Section: Self-administered Interviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting eyewitness evidence: Examining the efficacy of a self-administered interview tool.

Gabbert¹,

Hope²,

Fisher³

2009

Law and Human Behavior

190

304

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The cognitive interview for witnesses with autism spectrum disorder Eyewitness evidence is central to the criminal justice system. In 2007, 1.78 million UK offenders were found guilty or cautioned (UK Ministry of Justice, UK, 2008) and 87% of police officers indicated that eyewitnesses usually or always provided major investigative leads (Kebbell & Milne, 1998). Inaccurate or incomplete testimony can lead to wrongful conviction or acquittal (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1996) and so reliable interviewing techniques are imperative in eliciting the most detailed yet accurate reports from witnesses.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cognitive Interview for Eyewitnesses with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Maras

Bowler

2010

J Autism Dev Disord

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. The cognitive interview for witnesses with autism spectrum disorder Eyewitness evidence is central to the criminal justice system. In 2007, 1.78 million UK offenders were found guilty or cautioned (UK Ministry of Justice, UK, 2008) and 87% of police officers indicated that eyewitnesses usually or always provided major investigative leads (Kebbell & Milne, 1998). Inaccurate or incomplete testimony can lead to wrongful conviction or acquittal (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1996) and so reliable interviewing techniques are imperative in eliciting the most detailed yet accurate reports from witnesses. The Cognitive Interview (CI) is now one of the most widely used and accepted forms of interviewing in both the US and the UK (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992;Geiselman, 1984), and is currently taught to all police recruits in the UK (Dando & Milne, 2009). The CI has been shown to elicit detailed, yet accurate, reports from adult witnesses (Davis, McMahon & Greenwood, 2005;Kohnken, Milne, Memon & Bull, 1999), children (Geiselman & Padilla, 1988;Memon, Wark, Bull & Koehnken, 1997), older witnesses (Wright & Holliday, 2007b) and witnesses with learning disabilities (referred to in the US as mental retardation) (Milne, Clare & Bull, 1999 The Cognitive Interview (CI) is based on two basic principles of how memory typically operates; that retrieval of an event will be enhanced if the context experienced at recall matches that experienced during encoding (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992;Roediger, Weldon, Challis, & Craik, 1989; Tulving & Thompson, 1973), and that memories are stored as interconnected nodes that provide multiple retrieval routes (Tulving, 1974). On the basis of these principles the CI was the external (physical) and internal (subjective) states that they experienced during the witnessed event before freely reporting as many details of the event as possible. Permanent repository link:Recall of trivial or incomplete details is encouraged ('report all' instruction) since important facts may be elicited that co-occurred with seemingly unimportant events (Geiselman, Fisher, Mackinnon, & Holland, 1986). CR is followed by QU in whichwitnesses are asked open-ended questions based on what they said during their first free-recall attempt. Further details are elicited by asking witnesses to summon and describe mental images of the event, for example focusing on the best image they have of the victim in order to describe their clothing. During CO witnesses are then asked to recall the events in a different order, for example starting with the last thing they witnessed and working backwards in detail until they report the first thing they witnessed. Finally, the witness is asked to recall the event from a different perspective (CP), for example from the perspective of another person or imagining they were positioned in a different location (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). All four of these mnemonic strategies elicit more detai...

show abstract

“…Evidence from eyewitnesses, and its reliability, is often a key element in judicial processes (Kebbell & Milne, 1998;Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006). Historically, child witnesses were thought to be inherently unreliable (Odegard & Toglia, 2013), but the consensus now is that even developmentally young children provide at least some accurate information if interviewed appropriately (Bull, 2010;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do measures of memory, language, and attention predict eyewitness memory in children with and without autism?

Henry

Messer

Wilcock

et al. 2017

Autism & Developmental Language Impairments

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background and aims: There are few investigations of the relationship between cognitive abilities (memory, language, and attention) and children's eyewitness performance in typically developing children, and even fewer in children on the autism spectrum. Such investigations are important to identify key cognitive processes underlying eyewitness recall, and assess how predictive such measures are compared to intelligence, diagnostic group status (autism or typically developing) and age. Methods: A total of 272 children (162 boys, 110 girls) of age 76 months to 142 months (M ¼ 105 months) took part in this investigation: 71 children with autism and 201 children with typical development. The children saw a staged event involving a minor mock crime and were asked about what they had witnessed in an immediate Brief Interview. This focused on free recall, included a small number of open-ended questions, and was designed to resemble an initial evidence gathering statement taken by police officers arriving at a crime scene. Children were also given standardised tests of intelligence, memory, language, and attention. Results & conclusions: Despite the autism group recalling significantly fewer items of correct information than the typically developing group at Brief Interview, both groups were equally accurate in their recall: 89% of details recalled by the typically developing group and 87% of the details recalled by the autism group were correct. To explore the relationship between Brief Interview performance and the cognitive variables, alongside age, diagnostic group status and non-verbal intelligence quotient, multiple hierarchical regression analyses were conducted, with Brief Interview performance as the dependant variable. Age and diagnostic group status were significant predictors of correct recall, whereas non-verbal intelligence was less important. After age, non-verbal intelligence, and diagnostic group status had been accounted for, the only cognitive variables that were significant predictors of Brief Interview performance were measures of memory (specifically, memory for faces and memory for stories). There was little evidence of there being differences between the autism and typically developing groups in the way the cognitive variables predicted the Brief Interview. Implications: The findings provide reassurance that age -the most straightforward information to which all relevant criminal justice professionals have access -provides a helpful indication of eyewitness performance. The accuracy of prediction can be improved by knowing the child's diagnostic status (i.e. whether the child is on the autism spectrum), and further still by using more specific assessments (namely memory for faces and memory for stories), possibly via the input of a trained professional. Importantly, the findings also confirm that whilst children with autism may recall less information than typically developing children, the information they do recall is just as accurate.

show abstract

Police Officers' Perceptions of Eyewitness Performance in Forensic Investigations

Cited by 162 publications

References 12 publications

Protecting eyewitness evidence: Examining the efficacy of a self-administered interview tool.

Protecting eyewitness evidence: Examining the efficacy of a self-administered interview tool.

The Cognitive Interview for Eyewitnesses with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Do measures of memory, language, and attention predict eyewitness memory in children with and without autism?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About