Forensic Psychology - Making A Case

FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY

2) MAKING A CASE

Interviewing Witnesses:

• Bruce - Recognising Faces - 3 lab experiments (1= 30 staff/students from Stirling uni - sorting composites, 2= 48 undergrads from Stirling uni) Exp 1 - match up 40 composites with 10 E-FIT celebrity photos - sets either showed whole face, just internal or just external features - matched external/whole face 35% correct, internal matched 19.5% correct - Exp 2 - shown line up of celebrities and then 1 composite at a time and had to match composite to celeb - External 42% matching, internal 24% matching - internal correct matchings were just above chance level - it is hard to reconstruct internal features
• Loftus et al - Factors influencing idenification - weapon focus effect - lab exp, 36 students from washington uni - Control and Exptal Group - Control: slides of a queue of people in restaurant, person B hands cashier a cheque - Expt: Same slides but person B pulls out a gun - pp fill out a questionnaire and picked out person B out of 12 head to shoulder photos and rate confidence - questionnaire was same across conditions, control 38.9% correct on idenfitication whereas expt was only 11.1% correct - eye fixation data showd 3.72 on gun, 2.44 on cheque - pp spent longer looking at gun so had more difficulty identifying suspect. 
• Fisher et al - Cognitive interview - 1) Interview Similarity 2) Focused Retrieval 3) Extensive Retrieval 4) Witness compatible questnionning - field expt - 16 detectives, 1) detectives recorded selection of interviews over  4 months -> 88 interviews 2) split in two groups - one group had CI training - 4x60minute sessions 3) over next 7 months more interviews recorded and analysed - CI trained detectives collected 47% more info than before and 63% more than untrained - no difference in accuracy and CI took longer - SUPPORTS!

Interviewing Suspects:

• Mann - Detecting Lies - Field exp - 99 Kent Police - shown 54 clips and had to judge truthfulness of people and confidence- filled in questionnaire about experience of detecting lies - no significant diff between lie and truth accuracy but both were sig. above chance level - more experienced officers had more accuracy - cues for lying e.g. gaze, movements, vagueness, fidgeting 
• Inbau - Interrogation Techniques - 9 steps…