Search

The first aim of the current study is to investigate how people remember repeated events that are similar in nature (such as domestic violence), when there is a deviation (change) to the repeated events – in this case a non-stressful scenario compared to stressful scenarios, or vice versa. The secondary aim of the current study is to investigate whether stressful repeated events are remembered more accurately than non-stressful repeated events. The third aim of the current study is to investigate the interaction between deviation and stress.

Research suggests that forensic experts should acknowledge error in their testimonies to help jurors evaluate forensic evidence. However, no research has examined the impact of error acknowledgement on evaluations of DNA evidence. Additionally, no research has looked at how complexity of the testimony affects jurors' understanding of the error. This project explores how jurors would evaluate DNA evidence and DNA expert testimony, depending on how error is acknowledged by the expert (i.e., not acknowledged, acknowledged on direct examination, or acknowledged on cross-examination). The study also examines the impact of changing the complexity of a DNA expert's testimony on these evaluations.

Eyewitness testimony is highly influential in juror decision-making, despite research indicating that eyewitness memory could be easily subject to errors (Wells et al., 2006). This study aims to investigate jurors’ perception of contemporaneous notes, a method used to improve the accuracy of eyewitness memory (Gabbert et al., 2009). Specifically, the study will examine whether witnesses exhibiting reminiscence between their contemporaneous notes and in-trial statements would be perceived as less credible by jurors than those who remain consistent. Reminiscence occurs when a witness mentions details at a later time that are not mentioned in their earlier accounts. Literature has found those witnesses are perceived as less credible by jurors compared to consistent witness (Deck & Paterson, 2021), however in reality they could be accurate (Odinot et al., 2013). Given that, this study will also examine whether expert testimony could effectively mitigate this misunderstanding in jurors, and whether the timing of expert testimony in trial would have differential impact. Expert testimony is testimony provided by an expert who testifies in court to explain trial-relevant scientific concepts. Participants will read a fictitious trial transcript and will be asked questions regarding their perception of the witness and verdict.

This study will investigate adult memory for each instance of a repeated event. We are particularly interested whether memory performance differs depending on whether the repeated event consists of emotionally stressful versus non-stressful instances.

Judge's instructions provided to participants in 2 different conditions.

This project aims to investigate adult memory for repeated stressful events. 'Repeated events' refers to a type of event that has been experienced on more than one occasion and all consist of a common underlying structure. Repeated events are a common occurrence in such crimes as family and domestic violence. In this project, we are specifically interested in investigating which event is best remembered among a series of repeated events and whether this depends on the time delay between the last event and the memory test (i.e., retention interval).

Audiovisual materials presented to all participants during the study.

Participants answered these questions after being presented with the mock trial scenario and the body-worn camera evidence..

The current OSF registration contains a pre-registration for the project "Inattentional blindness and eyewitness memory - The effect of recall instruction". The pre-registration outlines the design of the study, the hypotheses, the analysis plan, and plans for exclusion of participants. When data is collected, the anonymised dataset and syntax will be included here. Any additional notes or metadata about the project will also be reported in this registration.

This project aims to investigate adult memory for repeated stressful events. 'Repeated events' refers to a type of event that has been experienced on more than one occasion and all consist of a common underlying structure. Repeated events are a common occurrence in such crimes as family and domestic violence. In this project we are specifically interested in investigating whether the memory reports for those that have experienced a repeated event contain less accurate information than those that have experienced a single event.

The current study is interested in exploring the effect of trial context (i.e. who the defendant is) on jury decision-making in cases involving body-worn camera (BWC) footage of an arrest. The key independent variables of interest are verdict, justifications of the use of force, and perceptions of the officer and civilian involved in the encounter. The study also aims to explore the interaction between trial context and individual difference variables such as perceptions of police. Footage obtained from body-worn cameras is often utilised as evidence during court proceedings. Visual evidence has the benefit of offering jurors a first hand experience of the event in question that requires them to rely on their own confidence and judgement, as opposed to a second-hand eyewitness account. (Granot, Balcetis, Feigenson & Tyler, 2018). Visual evidence is often praised as an objective and direct representation of reality, despite its vulnerability to biases (Feigenson & Spiesel, 2009). This is the product of ‘naive realism’, where the viewer is unaware of the cognitive, emotional and perceptual biases that shape their understanding and evaluation of such evidence (Granot et al., 2018).

See Original Registration: https://osf.io/d3vwa/?view_only=6b688cf4c0ff45c9a92f2fd21ffe2a8a

The liver is crucial for maintenance of metabolic homeostasis in eukaryotes. Dysregulation of metabolism in liver leads to obesity, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and cardiovascular disease. Liver disease alone costs approximately $157 billion per year, a huge burden on healthcare services and society globally. Pathways including glycolysis, lipogenesis and bile acid metabolism are frequently dysregulated and are subject to regulatory changes at the transcriptional, post-translational and signalling levels. However, alternative pre-mRNA splicing, a major contributor to both transcriptome composition and proteomic diversity has not been widely investigated in the context of hepatic metabolic disorders. This thesis demonstrates that there is a consistent mis-regulation of splicing factors and splicing events in liver under the influence of obesogenic diets (high fat, HFD and high fructose, FD). The motif of the splicing factor RBFOX2 is highly enriched surrounding alternatively spliced exons in healthy livers (control diet, CD) during feeding and fasting cycles, and between AS exons of obese livers (HFD vs CD and FD vs CD). Enhanced individual nucleotide crosslinking immunoprecipitation (eiCLIP) of RBFOX2 in primary hepatocytes showed that RBFOX2 targets are involved in cholesterol and lipid trafficking, homeostasis and regulation. Generation of a liver-specific RBFOX2 knockout mouse model (LΔRbfox2) showed that in high fructose loading, LΔRbfox2 mice have disrupted cholesterol and phospholipid metabolism. In response to increased lipogenesis from fructose consumption RBFOX2 regulates a network of targets. Use of splice switching oligos (SSOs) enabled subtle manipulation of RBFOX2 splicing targets to regulate lipid metabolic pathways. This may enhance and inform therapeutic strategies to combat metabolic dysregulation and liver disease. Open Access

Supplemental material, Supplementary_Aug25 for Validation of the Intuitive Eating Scale in pregnancy by Helen Paterson, Jean Hay-Smith, Gareth Treharne, Peter Herbison and Caroline Howarth in Journal of Health Psychology

The research presented in this thesis was designed to investigate the effects of co-witness information on the accuracy and completeness of eyewitness memory. Co-witness information is defined as information that one eyewitness conveys to another about an event that they both observed. Very little research has focused on co-witness discussion, so the first two studies surveyed real eyewitnesses and police officers to determine how often witnesses discuss the event with one another. The results from these surveys suggested that co-witnesses commonly talk about the event with each other and this outcome provided a clear justification for studying the effects of co-witness discussion on memory. Previous research on co-witness discussion has reached inconsistent conclusions, and the possibility exists that these discrepancies are due to methodological differences. Therefore, this research aimed to determine whether co-witness discussion helps or hinders individual recall, and to investigate this within a closely defined methodological set. In a series of five experiments, participants were shown a crime video and then asked to discuss the video in groups (some of which received experimentally induced misinformation from a cowitness). Following the discussion, participants were asked to give their individual accounts of what happened. These experiments showed that exposure to postevent information from a co-witness can cause people to incorporate this information into their individual testimonies, regardless of the accuracy of the information. This phenomenon has become known as 'memory conformity'. Relevant theories were tested in order to contribute to knowledge regarding the causes of memory conformity. Furthermore, the experiments also aimed to establish whether it is possible to mediate any negative effects of co-witness discussion by employing our theoretical understanding of the causes of memory conformity. Five approaches were utilized in an attempt to reduce the negative effects of co-witness discussion: warnings about possible misinformation, source monitoring, free recall, confidence ratings, and 'remember/know judgments' (Tulving, 1985). Some evidence was found to suggest that when using 'remember/know judgments' it may be possible to distinguish 'real' memories from information obtained from a co-witness. These results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.