Witnesses in action: The effect of physical exertion on recall and identification performance

Hope, Lorraine; Lewinski, William J.; Dixon, Justin; Blocksidge, David; Gabbert, Fiona

doi:10.1037/e669802012-079

Cited by 14 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…Accordingly, it would be reasonable to assume that armed officers acquire different routines and approach training less seriously during nonmenacing cardboard-target practice. Recent work in realistic settings showed that stresses provoked by performing physical assault exercises may degrade cognitive performance (Hope, Lewinski, Dixon, Blocksidge, & Gabbert, 2012). Likewise, the risk of being shot in an FoF setting degrades cognitive performance but simultaneously increases the perception of learning during training .…”

Section: Professional Performance and Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Force-on-Force Handgun Practice

Taverniers

P²

2013

Hum Factors

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Section: Professional Performance and Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Force-on-Force Handgun Practice

Taverniers

P²

2013

Hum Factors

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“…Challenging field environments are also associated with significant impairment in selective and sustained attention (Leach & Ansell, 2008) and reduced working memory capacity (Leach & Griffith, 2008). Focusing on the performance of police officers in simulated operational settings, Hope et al (2012) examined the effects of physiological stress, as a function of exertion, on recall and recognition and found that police officers who had been exerted prior to and during encoding reported significantly fewer correct details about an encounter, and were significantly less likely than non-exerted officers to identify an encountered target individual.…”

Section: Stress Arousal and Memory Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, we only ran participants in one stimulus event. However, little research in this particular applied context, with the exception of studies conducted by his colleagues (2013, 2014) in a military setting, has achieved similar levels of ecological validity (see Hope et al, 2012Hope et al, , 2013 for further discussion of this issue). Our decision to recruit pairs of officers was deliberate to limit any extraneous effects of law enforcement training and experience on recall performance.…”

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confidence: 99%

Memory and the operational witness: Police officer recall of firearms encounters as a function of active response role.

Hope¹,

Blocksidge²,

Gabbert³

et al. 2016

Law and Human Behavior

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Investigations after critical events often depend on accurate and detailed recall accounts from operational witnesses (e.g., law enforcement officers, military personnel, and emergency responders). However, the challenging, and often stressful, nature of such events, together with the cognitive demands imposed on operational witnesses as a function of their active role, may impair subsequent recall. We compared the recall performance of operational active witnesses with that of nonoperational observer witnesses for a challenging simulated scenario involving an armed perpetrator. Seventy-six police officers participated in pairs. In each pair, 1 officer (active witness) was armed and instructed to respond to the scenario as they would in an operational setting, while the other (observer witness) was instructed to simply observe the scenario. All officers then completed free reports and responded to closed questions. Active witnesses showed a pattern of heart rate activity consistent with an increased stress response during the event, and subsequently reported significantly fewer correct details about the critical phase of the scenario. The level of stress experienced during the scenario mediated the effect of officer role on memory performance. Across the sample, almost one-fifth of officers reported that the perpetrator had pointed a weapon at them although the weapon had remained in the waistband of the perpetrator’s trousers throughout the critical phase of the encounter. These findings highlight the need for investigator awareness of both the impact of operational involvement and stress-related effects on memory for ostensibly salient details, and reflect the importance of careful and ethical information elicitation techniques.

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“…Even simulated violence is likely to reduce recall of specific details of a given situation for a given witness (e.g. Hope, Lewinski, Dixon, Blocksidge, & Gabbert, 2012;Stanny & Johnson, 2000). This reduction includes but is not limited to peripheral details (Reisberg & Heuer, 2007), although core information, less dependent upon specific details, may be relatively preserved (Narby et al, 1996;Reisberg & Heuer, 2007.…”

Section: Violence and The Generation And Interpretation Of Equivocamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…) Stress under situations of simulated violence has been shown to reduce detail recall in both police and civilians (Stanny & Johnson, 2000), and to do so even more when physical stress is added (e.g. Hope et al, 2012).…”

Section: Violence and The Generation And Interpretation Of Equivocamentioning

confidence: 99%

Situationally Equivocal Eyewitness Evidence and the Violence of Crimes

Sharps

Herrera

Price-Sharps

2013

Journal Invest Psychology

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Eyewitness evidence is amongst the most important types of evidence in investigative and juridical proceedings. Yet, eyewitness evidence frequently derives from observations made under situationally equivocal conditions, including such factors as darkness and physical obstruction of view. The effect of the violence of a given crime on potential jurors' evaluation of such equivocal evidence was addressed. A witness's identification of a suspect in a violent crime was generated in three versions, varying only in the level of violence of the crime. Respondents were more likely to accept this identification as accurate under more violent conditions and were also less likely to report noticing or considering equivocal aspects (darkness and physical obstruction) in situations of greater violence. Predisposing factors to judgement of guilt lay significantly in the acceptance of punishment as a viable deterrent to crime and of societal guilt for the criminal's behaviour, although political or religious orientations were not shown to influence these results, and none of these factors interacted with the violence of the crime to influence judgement of guilt or innocence. These findings indicate the importance of affective factors in judgements of guilt or innocence, especially when these judgements are based on situationally equivocal eyewitness evidence.

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Witnesses in action: The effect of physical exertion on recall and identification performance

Cited by 14 publications

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Force-on-Force Handgun Practice

Force-on-Force Handgun Practice

Memory and the operational witness: Police officer recall of firearms encounters as a function of active response role.

Situationally Equivocal Eyewitness Evidence and the Violence of Crimes

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