Camera footage and identification testimony undermine the availability of exculpatory alibi evidence.

The present field experiment investigated how alibi witnesses react when confronted with camera footage or identification testimony that incriminates an innocent suspect. Under the pretext of a problem-solving study, pairs of participants (N = 109) and confederates worked on an individual task with a dividing wall obstructing their view of each other. When the mobile phone of the experimenter was missing from an adjacent room at the end of the session, all participants confirmed that the confederate had not left the room. After several days, participants returned to the lab for a second session. They were asked to confirm their corroboration, orally and in writing, after learning that the confederate either had been identified from a photograph or was present on camera footage. A control group received no evidence. In this second session, written (but not oral) alibi corroboration was weaker in the incriminating evidence conditions (47%) than the no-evidence condition (81%), as hypothesized. Unexpectedly, corroboration was equally strong in the camera and identification evidence conditions. As expected, alibi corroboration was stronger in session 1 than in session 2 for both camera (89% and 31-46%) and identification evidence conditions (86% and 31-49%). The current findings provide first evidence that camera footage and eyewitness identification testimony can bear on the availability of exculpatory alibi evidence in court and emphasize the need to document incidents of evidence contamination.

Frightened by the perpetrator's voice: Startle responsivity and cognitive processing predict earwitness speaker identification.

This study was inspired by the case of a robbery victim who was startled and reminded of the crime upon hearing a stranger's voice, while not clearly recognizing the speaker. To investigate whether specific voices can modulate startle reactions and thereby predict speaker identification, we presented an audio hijack scenario to 84 participants and afterwards asked them to identify the perpetrator among neutral and negative speech fragments, while measuring flash-evoked eye-blink startle responses. Furthermore, we addressed data-driven cognitive processing during the audio scenario as a potential moderator in voice discrimination. Negative speech and the perpetrator's voice led to potentiated startle. Enhanced startle was positively associated with voice discrimination, but only in neutral speech fragments. In negative fragments, this association was weakened as a function of self-reported levels of data-driven processing during encoding. Thus, startle responses can generally predict accurate voice recognition, but speech emotionality and cognitive processing moderate this relationship.

Masking the Identities of Celebrities and Personally Familiar Individuals: Effects on Visual and Auditory Recognition Performance.

The current study compared the effectiveness of masking on recognition performance for faces and voices of celebrities and personally familiar individuals. On the basis of the theory suggesting stronger memory representations for personally familiar individuals, we expected masking to be more effective for celebrities than for personally familiar stimulus persons. Furthermore, we sought to replicate the face recognition advantage with masked stimuli. Face pixelation and electronic changes of the voice pitch were applied as masking techniques, using four masking levels for each stimulus. Thirty-one undergraduate students were presented with the masked faces and voices of 10 celebrities and 10 personally familiar fellow students. As expected, more correct recognitions occurred for faces than for voices, suggesting that masking does not counteract the mechanisms causing the face recognition advantage. Unexpectedly, masking effectiveness did not differ between celebrities and personally familiar individuals. This may be due to the type of personally familiar individuals used. Within personally familiar stimuli, increased familiarity did not predict the effectiveness of masking. Whereas the highest masking level eliminated speaker recognition, masking did not fully eliminate face recognition. From a practical perspective, the findings especially question the suitability of pixelation as a means for identity concealment.

Consistency across repeated eyewitness interviews: contrasting police detectives' beliefs with actual eyewitness performance.

In the legal system, inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts are often used to discredit witnesses' credibility. This is at odds with research findings showing that witnesses frequently report reminiscent details (details previously unrecalled) at an accuracy rate that is nearly as high as for consistently recalled information. The present study sought to put the validity of beliefs about recall consistency to a test by directly comparing them with actual memory performance in two recall attempts. All participants watched a film of a staged theft. Subsequently, the memory group (N = 84) provided one statement immediately after the film (either with the Self-Administered Interview or free recall) and one after a one-week delay. The estimation group (N = 81) consisting of experienced police detectives estimated the recall performance of the memory group. The results showed that actual recall performance was consistently underestimated. Also, a sharp decline of memory performance between recall attempts was assumed by the estimation group whereas actual accuracy remained stable. While reminiscent details were almost as accurate as consistent details, they were estimated to be much less accurate than consistent information and as inaccurate as direct contradictions. The police detectives expressed a great concern that reminiscence was the result of suggestive external influences. In conclusion, it seems that experienced police detectives hold many implicit beliefs about recall consistency that do not correspond with actual recall performance. Recommendations for police trainings are provided. These aim at fostering a differentiated view on eyewitness performance and the inclusion of more comprehensive classes on human memory structure.

Speaking is silver, writing is golden? The role of cognitive and social factors in written versus spoken witness accounts.

Contradictory empirical findings and theoretical accounts exist that are in favor of either a written or a spoken superiority effect. In this article, we present two experiments that put the recall modality effect in the context of eyewitness reports to another test. More specifically, we investigated the role of cognitive and social factors in the effect. In both experiments, participants watched a videotaped staged crime and then gave spoken or written accounts of the event and the people involved. In Experiment 1, 135 participants were assigned to written, spoken-videotaped, spoken-distracted, or spoken-voice recorded conditions to test for the impact of cognitive demand and social factors in the form of interviewer presence. Experiment 2 (N = 124) tested the idea that instruction comprehensiveness differentially impacts recall performance in written versus spoken accounts. While there was no evidence for a spoken superiority effect, we found some support for a written superiority effect for description quantity, but not accuracy. Furthermore, any differences found in description quantity as a function of recall modality could be traced back to participants' free reports. Following up with cued open-ended questions compensated for this effect, although at the expense of description accuracy. This suggests that current police practice of arbitrarily obtaining written or spoken accounts is mostly unproblematic.