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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Forgetting The Once-Seen Face: Estimating The Strength Of An Eyewitness’S Memory Representation, Kenneth A. Deffenbacher, Brian H. Bornstein, E. Kiernan Mcgorty, Steven D. Penrod Jan 2008

Forgetting The Once-Seen Face: Estimating The Strength Of An Eyewitness’S Memory Representation, Kenneth A. Deffenbacher, Brian H. Bornstein, E. Kiernan Mcgorty, Steven D. Penrod

Psychology Faculty Publications

The fidelity of an eyewitness’s memory representation is an issue of paramount forensic concern. Psychological science has been un¬able to offer more than vague generalities concerning the relation of retention interval to memory trace strength for the once-seen face. A meta-analysis of 53 facial memory studies produced a highly reliable association (r = .18, d = 0.37) between longer retention intervals and positive forgetting of once-seen faces, an effect equally strong for both face recognition and eyewitness identification studies. W. A. Wick¬elgren’s (1974, 1975, 1977) theory of recognition memory provided statistically satisfactory fits to 11 different empirical forgetting func¬tions. Applied …


Mugshot Exposure Effects: Retroactive Interference, Mugshot Commitment, Source Confusion, And Unconscious Transference, Kenneth A. Deffenbacher, Brian H. Bornstein, Steven D. Penrod May 2006

Mugshot Exposure Effects: Retroactive Interference, Mugshot Commitment, Source Confusion, And Unconscious Transference, Kenneth A. Deffenbacher, Brian H. Bornstein, Steven D. Penrod

Psychology Faculty Publications

More than 25 years of research has accumulated concerning the possible biasing effects of mugshot exposure to eyewitnesses. Two separate metaanalyses were conducted on 32 independent tests of the hypothesis that prior mugshot exposure decreases witness accuracy at a subsequent lineup. Mugshot exposure both significantly decreased proportion correct and increased the false alarm rate, the effect being greater on false alarms. A mugshot commitment effect, arising from the identification of someone in a mugshot, was a substantial moderator of both these effects. Simple retroactive interference, where the target person is not included among mugshots and no one in a mugshot …


A Meta-Analytic Review Of The Effects Of High Stress On Eyewitness Memory, Kenneth A. Deffenbacher, Brian H. Bornstein, Steven D. Penrod, E. Kiernan Mcgorty Dec 2004

A Meta-Analytic Review Of The Effects Of High Stress On Eyewitness Memory, Kenneth A. Deffenbacher, Brian H. Bornstein, Steven D. Penrod, E. Kiernan Mcgorty

Psychology Faculty Publications

In the past 30 years researchers have examined the impact of heightened stress on the fidelity of eyewitness memory. Meta-analyses were conducted on 27 independent tests of the effects of heightened stress on eyewitness identification of the perpetrator or target person and separately on 36 tests of eyewitness recall of details associated with the crime. There was considerable support for the hypothesis that high levels of stress negatively impact both types of eyewitness memory. Meta-analytic Z-scores, whether unweighted or weighted by sample size, ranged from -5.40 to -6.44 (high stress condition–low stress condition). The overall effect sizes were -.31 for …