The use of filler samples moderates the effect of contextual information on forensic match decisions

The criminal justice system is susceptible to errors that can lead to wrongful conviction of innocent people, sometimes caused by faulty forensic evidence presented at trial. Among the problems is the fact that contextual information can bias forensic examiners to make “match” decisions when the materials are ambiguous (Dror, Peron, Hind, & Charlton, 2005; Dror, Charlton, & Peron, 2006). It is unlikely that contextual information could ever be eliminated from police investigations and the forensic examination procedure. Instead, the current experiment suggests that providing examiners with evidence lineups—analogous to eyewitness identification lineups where the suspect is embedded among similar-looking, known innocent fillers—can reduce the effect of contextual bias. This paper describes the first experiment conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of evidence lineups, called the filler-control procedure (Wells, Wilford, & Smalarz, 2013). Participants were trained and then examined eight sets of fingerprint materials. The materials were either more ambiguous or less ambiguous, and some of the sets had an actual match present and some did not. Furthermore, some participants received the filler-control procedure, and some the standard procedure—only one comparison print to compare to the crime print, as is standard in forensic examination procedures. The final manipulation was the presence or absence of related contextual information, in the form of a police case report suggesting that the suspect in the case is guilty. The results showed a contextual bias effect in the standard procedure when the materials were more ambiguous, but only when there was no actual fingerprint match present. So, the innocent suspect is in the most danger when the materials are degraded or difficult to compare, and the innocent suspect’s print is the only print presented to compare to the crime sample. The filler-control procedure, however, eliminated the effect of contextual information. Although the number of affirmative match decisions increased when using the filler-control method, these match decisions were spread across the lineup to the filler prints rather than loading onto the innocent suspect. These results mirror the results found in eyewitness identification, and show promise for use in the real world as a means to reduce wrongful conviction and improve forensic testing accuracy

The Structure of an Arctic Microeconomy: The Traditional Sector in Community Economic Development

Data collected during 1984-85 are used to describe income and expenditure flows in Sanikiluaq, N.W.T. (the principal settlement on the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay) and to construct a model that distinguishes between the traditional and modern sectors, as well as between the cash and non-cash (traditional food) sectors, of the community economy. When judged by imputed value, the harvest from the traditional sector is the single largest component of community income, but this activity necessarily has close links with the cash sector. Expansion of activity in the traditional food sector is hampered by the necessity of purchasing equipment and fuel in advance, and because there are few opportunities to sell the output of this sector, the problem cannot be solved solely by availability of credit. Because the cash income from jobs in the business and government sectors of the economy are concentrated in a small number of households, receipts from carving and social assistance play a crucial role in relieving the cash constraint on households operating primarily in the country food sector. We conclude that policies designed to ensure the vitality of the country food sector, by removing cash constraints on participation and investigating the sustainability of future harvesting levels, should be an integral part of community development strategies.Key words: Sanikiluaq, Inuit, community economic structure, traditional food sector, income and expenditure, economic development strategies On se sert de données recueillies en 1984-85 pour décrire les flux des revenus et dépenses à Sanikiluaq, le village le plus important des îles Belcher dans la baie d'Hudson (T. du N.-O.), et pour construire un modèle qui distingue entre les secteurs traditionnels et modernes, ainsi qu'entre ceux des liquidités et ceux non monétaires (alimentation traditionnelle) de l'économie de la communauté. Si l'on s'en remet à la valeur imputée, la composante la plus importante des revenus de la communauté est constituée de loin par le produit de la chasse et de la pêche du secteur traditionnel. Il est cependant évident que cette activité est associée de façon étroite au secteur des liquidités. L'obligation d'acheter à l'avance l'équipement et le combustible constitue un obstacle au développement des activités dans le secteur traditionnel de l'alimentation, et, parce qu'il existe peu d'occasion de vendre le produit de ce secteur, le problème ne peut être résolu par le seul accès au crédit. Vu que les encaissements provenant des emplois dans les secteurs économiques des affaires et du gouvernement sont concentrés dans un petit nombre de foyers, les recettes provenant de la sculpture et de l'assistance sociale jouent un rôle crucial pour alléger les contraintes monétaires dans les foyers qui travaillent surtout dans le secteur alimentaire local. On en conclut que les stratégies de développement de la communauté doivent absolument inclure des politiques visant à assurer la vitalité du secteur alimentaire local en supprimant les contraintes monétaires sur la participation, et en examinant si le niveau de production de la chasse et de la pêche pourrait être maintenu. Mots clés : Sanikiluaq, Inuit, structure économique de la communauté, secteur traditionnel de l'alimentation, revenus et dépenses, stratégies de développement économiqu

The repeated-suspect effect: What is the effect of repeated identification attempts on eyewitness accuracy and the original memory for the culprit?

Police routinely give eyewitnesses multiple opportunities to identify the same suspect, and numerous exoneration cases demonstrate that this practice can contribute to wrongful convictions. Empirical research addressing this practice shows it can lead to the repeated-suspect effect, which is a significant increase in suspect identifications after the same suspect has been presented in a previous showup or lineup (Steblay & Dysart, 2016). Procedures that tend to increase the chance of innocent suspect identifications are considered suggestive and produce unreliable eyewitness decisions. Thus, the use of multiple identification opportunities is considered suggestive and are discouraged by researchers (Wells et al., 2020). Despite this, eyewitness testimony obtained using suggestive procedures is frequently used at trial anyway because it is still admissible in court if other criteria are met indicating the identification was “nevertheless reliable” (Manson v. Brathwaite, 1977; Wells & Quinlivan, 2009). This dissertation builds on past research in this area by examining the effect of more the one intervening lineup and biased intervening lineups containing the same innocent suspect in two experiments, and how these different intervening lineup manipulations impact identification outcomes, confidence, and mechanism-related questions. Participants in both experiments watched a crime video, completed an intervening task phase, then evaluated a final, fair lineup. For Experiment 1, the intervening tasks were a fair lineup, a biased lineup, or a reading comprehension control task, and the final lineup contained either an innocent suspect, repeated from the intervening lineup, or the true culprit embedded among five fillers. For both studies, a repeated-suspect effect occurred such that a fair intervening lineup containing the innocent suspect resulted in more misidentifications of that same innocent suspect in the final lineup, consistent with past research. Furthermore, when participants received an intervening lineup that was biased towards the repeated innocent suspect, the repeated-suspect effect was more pronounced with significantly more innocent suspect picks from the final lineup when compared with participants who received a fair intervening lineup. Similarly, in Experiment 2, presenting participants with two intervening lineups exacerbated repeated-suspect effects relative to only one intervening lineup, particularly when one of those intervening lineups was biased. In Experiment 1, participants who received a final lineup containing the culprit were equally able to identify the culprit regardless of the intervening task condition, indicating that the memory for the true culprit was maintained despite exposure to misleading intervening lineups. Overall, these studies confirm that multiple identification attempts that each contain the same innocent suspect decreases the reliability of eyewitness decisions and increases the risk of misidentification for the innocent suspect. Moreover, these effects become stronger when the intervening lineups are biased or when more intervening lineups are introduced. Post-identification questions were also used to determine how the repetition manipulation and lineup bias manipulation might influence the relative contribution of two cognitive (dual-process recognition and source misattribution) and two social (commitment and demand characteristics) mechanisms for repeated-suspect effects. These self-report measures were used to speculate about how these processes are involved in creating repeated-suspect effects and to encourage future research addressing non-memory mechanisms in eyewitness identification research

Explicit Attitudes Towards Race: The Impact of Active Learning in Teaching Diversity

The majority of colleges and universities in the United States require students to take at least one diversity-related course to graduate. Considering the current political climate, this is a step in the right direction as it should encourage students to be more accepting and help facilitate an inclusive campus environment. However, these courses typically are not tailored towards addressing current diversity issues impacting Americans (e.g., New Zealand Film counts as a cultural diversity credit at Oberlin College in Ohio). In addition, very little empirical research has been conducted looking at the effectiveness of these courses or at which teaching methods are most beneficial for promoting inclusivity and attitude change. Therefore, we conducted an empirical study looking at the benefits of open discussion and active learning for starting the process of attitude change and to promote understanding of diverse groups and cultures. Results revealed that students were slightly more motivated to control their prejudice and that color-blind racial attitudes decreased. Contrary to expectations, results revealed that students were slightly more discriminatory after engaging with the course content

Mistaken Eyewitness Identification Rates Increase When Either Witnessing or Testing Conditions get Worse

We examined how giving eyewitnesses a weak recognition experience impacts their identification decisions. In two experiments we forced a weak recognition experience for lineups by impairing either encoding or retrieval conditions. In Experiment 1 (N = 245), undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to watch either a clear or a degraded culprit video and then viewed either a culprit-present or culprit-removed lineup identification procedure. In Experiment 2 (N = 227), all participants watched the same clear culprit video but were then randomly assigned to either view a clear or noise- degraded lineup procedure. Half of the participants viewed a culprit-present lineup procedure and the remaining participants viewed a culprit-removed lineup procedure. Not surprisingly degrading either encoding or retrieval conditions led to a sharp drop in culprit identifications. Critically, and as predicted, degrading either encoding or retrieval conditions also led to a sharp increase in the identification of innocent persons. These results suggest that when a lineup procedure gives a witness a weak match-to-memory experience, the witness will lower her criterion for making an affirmative identification decision. This pattern of results is troubling because it suggests that witnesses who encounter lineups that do not include the culprit might have a tendency to use a lower criterion for identification than do witnesses who encounter lineups that actually include the culprit

Match me if you can: Evidence for a domain-general visual comparison ability

Visual comparison—comparing visual stimuli (e.g., fingerprints) side by side and determining whether they originate from the same or different source (i.e., “match”)—is a complex discrimination task involving many cognitive and perceptual processes. Despite the real-world consequences of this task, which is often conducted by forensic scientists, little is understood about the psychological processes underpinning this ability. There are substantial individual differences in visual comparison accuracy amongst both professionals and novices. The source of this variation is unknown, but may reflect a domain-general and naturally varying perceptual ability. Here, we investigate this by comparing individual differences (N = 248 across two studies) in four visual comparison domains: faces, fingerprints, firearms, and artificial prints. Accuracy on all comparison tasks was significantly correlated and accounted for a substantial portion of variance (e.g., 42% in Exp. 1) in performance across all tasks. Importantly, this relationship cannot be attributed to participants’ intrinsic motivation or skill in other visual-perceptual tasks (visual search and visual statistical learning). This paper provides novel evidence of a reliable, domain-general visual comparison ability

Toward Consistency in Latent Print Examiners’ Naming Conventions and Minutiae Frequency Estimations

This presentation is from the 76th Annual Conference of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), Denver, Colorado, February 19-24, 2024. Copyright 2024, The Authors. Posted with permission of CSAFE

The effect of contextual information on decision-making in forensic toxicology

The impact of cognitive bias on decisions in forensic science has been demonstrated in numerous disciplines such as DNA and fingerprints, but has not been empirically investigated in the more objective domains, such as forensic toxicology. In the first experiment, participants (n= 58) were affected by irrelevant case information when analysing data from an immunoassay test for opiate-type drugs. In the second experiment, participants (n=53) were biased in their choice of tests, for example, the age of the deceased impacted testing strategy: for older people, medicinal drugs were commonly chosen, whereas for younger people drugs of abuse were selected. Based on the results that examiners analyzing case data may have biases if they are given access to case context, we propose that examiners analysing presumptive test data are blind to irrelevant contextual information. Furthermore, that forensic toxicology laboratories use a protocols consistent, and that any deviations are documented and justified