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We propose a dynamic theory of decisions not to choose which of 2 options is correct. Such "do not-know" judgments are of theoretical and practical importance in domains ranging from comparative psychology, psychophysics, episodic memory, and metacognition to applied areas including educational testing and eyewitness testimony. However, no previous theory has provided a detailed quantitative account of the time it takes to make both definitive and do not-know responses and their relative frequencies. We tested our theory, the multiple threshold race (MTR), in 1 recognition memory experiment where participants had to pick a previously studied target out of 2 similar faces and another where targets and lures were tested 1 at a time. In both experiments we manipulated similarity through face morphing. High similarity made decisions difficult, encouraging do not-know responses. We also tested the MTR's ability to account for other manipulations that aimed to affect the speed and probability of do not-know responses, including increasing penalties for making an error (with no penalty for a do not-know response) and emphasizing either response speed or accuracy. We found that there were marked individual differences in do not-know use, and that the MTR was able to account for the intricate pattern of effects associated with our manipulations, both on average and in terms of individual differences. We discuss how estimates of MTR's parameters illuminate the psychological mechanisms that govern the interplay between definitive and do not-know responding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

We tested whether multiple doses of feedback have cumulative effects on eyewitness-identification confidence. In Experiment 1, participants made mistaken identifications and received or did not receive three forms of confirming feedback: (1) co-witness feedback; (2) vague feedback from the experimenter (“You’ve been a good witness”); and (3) inference-based feedback, in which eyewitnesses were led to infer that their identification was accurate. Co-witness feedback and inference-based feedback independently inflated eyewitness confidence, providing some evidence of cumulation. In Experiment 2, participants received or did not receive co-witness feedback and/or inference-based feedback following their mistaken lineup identifications. Two doses of feedback produced significantly higher confidence than did one dose of feedback, demonstrating significant cumulation. These findings suggest that multiple doses of subtle post-identification feedback can cumulate to have large distorting effects on later testimony.

Forensic professionals frequently ask children to recount the occurrence and the content of allegation-relevant conversations during maltreatment investigations. However, little is known about children's conversation memory, especially after long delays that often characterize forensic investigations. Participants included 77 9-year-olds. When children were 8 years old, they participated in two to-be-remembered conversations: a target conversation and an initial interview regarding the target conversation. Memory for both conversations was examined 1 year later. After a year, children remembered the topic of the target conversation, but gist recall of statements was limited. Additionally, children demonstrated a yes-bias when answering yes/no questions about conversation statements. Virtually none of the children recalled participating in the initial interview. Our results suggest that after 1 year, children may remember the topic of seminal conversations, but memory for conversational statements may be sparse and unreliable. Furthermore, children may not recall engaging in peripheral conversations (such as interviews) after extended delays.

Recognition judgments can benefit from the use of environmental cues that signal the general likelihood of encountering familiar versus unfamiliar stimuli. While incorporating such cues is often adaptive, there are circumstances (e.g., eyewitness testimony) in which observers should fully ignore environmental cues in order to preserve memory report fidelity. The current studies used the explicit memory cueing paradigm to examine whether participants could intentionally ignore reliable environmental cues when instructed. Three experiments demonstrated that participants could volitionally dampen the directional influence of environmental cues on their recognition judgments (i.e., whether influenced to respond "old" or "new") but did not fully eliminate their influence. Although monetary incentives diminished the mean influence of cues on responses rates, finer grained individual differences analysis, as well as confidence and RTs analyses, demonstrated that participants were still systematically influenced. These results demonstrate that environmental cues presented at test remain a potent influence on recognition decisions and subjective confidence even when ostensibly ignored. (PsycINFO Database Record

Confidence in our memories is influenced by many factors, including beliefs about the perceptibility or memorability of certain kinds of objects and events, as well as knowledge about our skill sets, habits, and experiences. Notoriously, our knowledge and beliefs about memory can lead us astray, causing us to be overly confident in eyewitness testimony or to overestimate the frequency of recent experiences. Here, using visual working memory as a case study, we designed two experiments that strip away all these potentially misleading cues, requiring observers to make confidence judgments by directly assessing the quality of their memory representations. We show that individuals can monitor the status of information in working memory as it degrades over time. Our findings suggest that people have access to information reflecting the existence and quality of their working memories, and furthermore, that they can use this information to guide their behavior.

From the first days of life, children encounter pain. Whether a result of commonly experienced medical procedures (e.g., vaccine injections) or minor injuries resulting in bumps and bruises, children frequently experience pain. Given the highly subjective nature of pain (Merskey & Bogduk, 1994) and the powerful modulating influence that one's cognitions, emotions, and behaviours can have on how pain is experienced, pain is a fascinating field for psychological inquiry. Early pain experiences provide rich learning contexts within which children's pain cognitions and behaviours are socialized. Childhood pain experiences set the stage for pain coping across the life span.One particularly important aspect of pain phenomenology is memory for pain. Pain memory is a critical cognitive requirement for children to self-report on their pain (Chan & von Baeyer, 2016) and invariably shapes their future pain coping (Noel, Chambers, Petter, et al., 2012; von Baeyer, Marche, Rocha, & Salmon, 2004). How individuals remember pain from childhood can have a lasting impact on their future pain and health behaviours well into adulthood. Children's explicit memories for pain have been implicated in the development of fears (e.g., needle phobias) and avoidance of medical care into adulthood (McMurtry et al., 2015). Moreover, conceptual models put forth to understand the development and maintenance of pediatric chronic pain and comorbid mental health issues posit that distressing pain memories may be an underlying cognitive mechanism (Holley, Willson, Noel, & Palermo, 2016). Importantly, pain memories are malleable, particularly in early childhood, making them a powerful target in psychological pain management interventions (Noel, 2016). Changing the pain memory can change the pain experience (Chen, Zeltzer, Craske, & Katz, 1999; Pickrell et al., 2007). Given the deleterious long-term impact of poorly managed acute pain (McMurtry et al., 2015) and the growing (King et al., 2011), costly (Groenewald, Wright, & Palermo, 2015), and debilitating (Palermo, 2000) epidemic of pediatric chronic pain, which pain memories may underlie, understanding the development and modifiable nature of children's pain memories is critically important.Early research on children's pain memories focused on whether or not children could be accurate reporters of their pain. This research had forensic and clinical implications, shedding light on whether or not children could reliably provide eyewitness testimony following stressful/painful events (e.g., abuse) and report on past pain for treatment purposes (e.g., prescribing of pain medications). Researchers then began to examine individual predictors of recall accuracy. Longitudinal studies on the role of pain memories in shaping subsequent pain experiences have been few and far between (Chen, Zeltzer, Craske, & Katz, 2000), and although some researchers have developed and tested interventions to modify pain memories to, in turn, alter subsequent pain experiences (Chen et al., 1999; Pickrell et al., 2007), there has been a dearth of treatment research in this area.This article provides a narrative review of the literature on children's memory for pain. It builds upon previous reviews on this topic (Noel, Chambers, Petter, et al., 2012; Ornstein, Manning, & Pelphrey, 1999; von Baeyer et al., 2004) by synthesizing literature published in the past 5 years. In light of advances in neuroimaging techniques and research in pediatric pain, we summarise relevant literature on the neurobiology of pain memories to stimulate future interdisciplinary research in this area. Given the integral role of children's pain memories in subsequent pain experiences, the potential role of pain memories in the development and maintenance of chronic pain and comorbid psychopathology (e.g., PTSD; Holley et al., 2016), and the development of new memory reframing techniques (Marche, Briere, & von Baeyer, 2016), understanding this literature, and how to advance it, is timely. …

We report the existence of a previously undescribed group of people, namely individuals who are so poor at recognition of other-race faces that they meet criteria for clinical-level impairment (i.e., they are "face-blind" for other-race faces). Testing 550 participants, and using the well-validated Cambridge Face Memory Test for diagnosing face blindness, results show the rate of other-race face blindness to be nontrivial, specifically 8.1% of Caucasians and Asians raised in majority own-race countries. Results also show risk factors for other-race face blindness to include: a lack of interracial contact; and being at the lower end of the normal range of general face recognition ability (i.e., even for own-race faces); but not applying less individuating effort to other-race than own-race faces. Findings provide a potential resolution of contradictory evidence concerning the importance of the other-race effect (ORE), by explaining how it is possible for the mean ORE to be modest in size (suggesting a genuine but minor problem), and simultaneously for individuals to suffer major functional consequences in the real world (e.g., eyewitness misidentification of other-race offenders leading to wrongful imprisonment). Findings imply that, in legal settings, evaluating an eyewitness's chance of having made an other-race misidentification requires information about the underlying face recognition abilities of the individual witness. Additionally, analogy with prosopagnosia (inability to recognize even own-race faces) suggests everyday social interactions with other-race people, such as those between colleagues in the workplace, will be seriously impacted by the ORE in some people. (PsycINFO Database Record

Fuzzy-trace theory posits independent verbatim and gist memory processes, a distinction that has implications for such applied topics as eyewitness testimony. This distinction between precise, literal verbatim memory and meaning-based, intuitive gist accounts for memory paradoxes including dissociations between true and false memory, false memories outlasting true memories, and developmental increases in false memory. We provide an overview of fuzzy-trace theory, and, using mathematical modeling, also present results demonstrating verbatim and gist memory in true and false recognition of narrative sentences and inferences. Results supported fuzzy-trace theory's dual-process view of memory: verbatim memory was relied on to reject meaning-consistent, but unpresented, sentences (via recollection rejection). However, verbatim memory was often not retrieved, and gist memory supported acceptance of these sentences (via similarity judgment and phantom recollection). Thus, mathematical models of words can be extended to explain memory for complex stimuli, such as narratives, the kind of memory interrogated in law.

Confidence judgments about the quality of memory can have serious implications in eyewitness settings. Three experiments investigated the effect of eye-closure during eyewitness interviews on confidence-accuracy relations in event recall. In all experiments, participants viewed video-taped events and were subsequently questioned about the event, while they had their eyes open or closed. Participants provided confidence ratings for each response. We found that participants were generally able to monitor the accuracy of their responses, although they displayed underconfidence for imprecise responses. Importantly, across all experiments, eye-closure increased accuracy without significantly inflating confidence or impairing confidence-accuracy relations. Moreover, in Experiment 3, reducing distraction (e.g., through eye-closure) significantly reduced overconfidence. Thus, unlike most other investigative interview protocols that facilitate recall, eye-closure improves recall accuracy with no apparent cost, and some evidence of benefit, to metamemory. Practical implications of these findings are discussed, and hypotheses regarding potential theoretical mechanisms are proposed.

The present set of experiments aimed to investigate the effects of negative emotion on specific aspects of eyewitness recall and recognition performance. The experience of emotion was manipulated between subjects, with participants either viewing a crime scenario (a mugging) or a neutral scenario (a conversation). Eyewitness recall was categorized into descriptions of the perpetrator, critical incident, victim, and environmental details. The completeness and accuracy of eyewitness recall across categories of detail were measured in Experiment 1. A significant main effect of negative emotion was found for the completeness of recall. Furthermore, a significant main effect of the completeness of eyewitness statements was found, but not for their accuracy. However, these main effects were qualified by a significant interaction between emotion and category of detail recalled. Specifically, emotional participants provided a more complete description of the perpetrator than neutral participants; however, they were less able than their neutral counterparts to describe what the perpetrator did to the victim. In light of these findings, Experiment 2 investigated whether enhanced completeness of perpetrator descriptions during recall translated into an enhanced ability to recognize the perpetrator from a photographic lineup by emotional compared with neutral participants. Results from Experiment 2 suggest that while emotional participants again provide a more complete description of the perpetrator, they are less able than their neutral counterparts to recognize the perpetrator from a photographic lineup. Results are discussed in terms of a retrieval motivation hypothesis of negative emotional experience and the possible consequences for eyewitness testimony.

Multinomial processing tree (MPT) models such as the single high-threshold, double high-threshold, and low-threshold models are discrete-state decision models that map internal cognitive events onto overt responses. The apparent benefit of these models is that they provide independent measures of accuracy and response bias, a claim that has motivated their frequent application in many areas of psychological science including perception, item and source memory, social cognition, reasoning, educational testing, eyewitness testimony, and psychopathology. Before appropriate conclusions about a given analysis can be drawn, however, one must first confirm that the model's assumptions about the underlying structure of the data are valid. The current review outlines the assumptions of several popular MPT models and assesses their validity using multiple sources of evidence, including receiver operating characteristics, direct model fits, and experimental tests of qualitative predictions. We argue that the majority of the evidence is inconsistent with these models and that, instead, the evidence supports continuous models such as those based on signal detection theory (SDT). Hybrid models that incorporate both SDT and MPT processes are also explored, and we conclude that these models retain the limitations associated with their threshold model predecessors. The potentially severe consequences associated with using an invalid model to interpret data are discussed, and a simple tutorial and model-fitting tool is provided to allow implementation of the empirically supported SDT model.

We addressed the question of whether felony case dispositions are associated with eyewitness identification evidence. Toward this end, 725 felony cases (rape, robbery, and assault) were randomly sampled from the archives of a District Attorney’s Office in a large south-western city in the United States. Positive eyewitness identification evidence was more likely in cases issued compared to those rejected for prosecution although other case factors were associated with issuing outcomes to a larger extent. Additionally, eyewitness identification evidence was stronger in prosecuted compared to rejected cases in which eyewitness testimony was the sole evidence against the defendant. Neither the presence of multiple identifications nor non-identifications of the suspect varied across issuing outcomes. The findings are discussed in relation to additional research that is needed at the police and prosecution stages to advance public policy development with respect to the evaluation of eyewitness identification evidence.

Two experiments were conducted to test whether post-identification feedback affects evaluations of eyewitnesses. In Experiment 1 (N = 156), evaluators viewed eyewitness testimony. They evaluated witnesses who received confirming post-identification feedback as more accurate and more confident, among other judgments, compared with witnesses who received disconfirming post-identification feedback or no feedback. This pattern persisted regardless of whether the witness's confidence statement was included in the testimony. In Experiment 2 (N = 161), witness evaluators viewed the actual identification procedure in which feedback was delivered. Instructions to disregard the feedback were manipulated. Again, witnesses who received confirming feedback were assessed more positively. This pattern occurred even when witness evaluators received instructions to disregard the feedback. These experiments are the first to confirm researchers' assumptions that feedback effects on witnesses translate to changes in judgments of those witnesses.

Do people realize the danger of asking misinformed children yes-no questions? Study 1 confirmed that disclosures children made during free recall in an earlier suggestibility study were more accurate than disclosures following "yes" responses to yes-no questions, which in turn were more accurate than disclosures following "no" responses. In Studies 2 and 3, college students watched interviews of children and judged the veracity of these three disclosure patterns. Participants generally believed false reports representing the first two patterns, although watching expert testimony that included a videotaped example of a false report reduced trust in prompted disclosures. Results document the need to inform forensic decision-makers about the circumstances associated with erroneous responses to yes-no questions.

Eyewitness testimony plays a critical role in Western legal systems. Three experiments extended M. Goldsmith, A. Koriat, and A. Weinberg-Eliezer's (2002) framework of the regulation of grain size (precision vs. coarseness) of memory reports to eyewitness memory. In 2 experiments, the grain size of responses had a large impact on memory accuracy. Further, participants achieved a compromise between the accuracy and informativeness of their testimony by volunteering precise answers only when likely to be correct. The level of detail reported was strongly, positively related to confidence in the accuracy of the response. This highlights the importance of considering the level of detail, not just the accuracy, of eyewitness testimony.

The authors examined the relation between children's narrative ability, which has been identified as an important contributor to memory development, and suggestibility. Across 2 studies, a total of 112 preschool-aged children witnessed a staged event and were subsequently questioned suggestively. Results from Study 1 indicated that children's ability to provide a high-quality narrative of the event was related to resistance to suggestive questions, and narrative ability appeared to supersede age as a predictor of such resistance. In Study 2, children's general language and narrative abilities were measured in addition to their ability to produce a high-quality narrative about the target event. These results replicated Study 1's findings that children's ability to produce a high-quality narrative of a previously experienced event predicted resistance to suggestion. However, the quality of children's autobiographical memory narratives predicted shifting from denial to assent. Findings are considered in light of narrative's role in memory development and underlying mechanisms that may explain children's suggestibility.

Thousands of people have found themselves facing criminal or civil litigation as a result of questionable memories. Sometimes these involve faulty memory of eyewitnesses to crimes. Psychological science has informed the legal system about memory and enabled productive changes in the handling of eyewitness evidence. The chances of wrongful convictions hopefully go down in the process . But sometimes the questionable memories involve allegations of massive repression of horrible brutalization. In these cases, there is enormous controversy, and downright skepticism, over whether such massive repression even occurs. Unless or until better proof becomes available for these types of claims, a reasonable argument exists for keeping these dubious claims out of the courtroom altogether. Canada has seen its share of problematic, if not downright dangerous, memories being introduced into legal cases. I had a chance to play a role in two such cases. One of them involved the mistaken identification of Thomas Sophonow, described in detail by (Yarmey, this issue). The other involved dubious allegations of repressed memories that forced teacher Michael Kliman to endure three trials before his ultimate acquittal, a case that should probably be considered when evaluating the conclusions drawn by Porter, Campbell, Birt, and Woodworth (this issue). In both of these cases, witnesses came to court to testify based on their memories, and in both cases false or highly dubious memories were accepted by Canadian jurors. For centuries now, we have had experience with people who come to court to testify, and they take the familiar solemn oath. In light of what psychological science has taught us about human memory, I recently proposed that witnesses probably ought to be taking a more realistic oath: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, or whatever it is you think you remember?" (Loftus, 2002). Thomas Sophonow was accused of murdering a young waitress who worked in a donut shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Several eyewitnesses testified against Sophonow but there were problems with each one. For example, the photo array shown to a number of witnesses contained a picture of Sophonow, which was significantly different than the other men in the array. For one thing, Sophonow's picture was taken outdoors while the rest of the men were photographed inside. Sophonow is shown wearing a cowboy hat, unlike most of the other possible suspects. Sophonow was also the only man who was depicted in both the photo and the physical lineup, making it possible witnesses chose him because they had seen his picture before. Moreover, Sophonow was the tallest man shown to witnesses, and the killer had been described as a tall man. Despite these and other problems with the eyewitness testimony, Sophonow was convicted of murder and spent nearly four years in prison. Eventually, he was declared factually innocent. An official inquiry was established to investigate what went wrong, to determine just compensation for Mr. Sophonow, and to make recommendations about future cases. Commissioner Peter Cory was eloquent in his description of the suffering of this one man, falsely accused: What has he suffered? ...He is psychologically scarred for life. He will always suffer from the core symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. As well, he will always suffer from paranoia, depression and the obsessive desire to clear his name. His reputation as a murderer has affected him in every aspect of his life, from work to family relations. The community in which he lived believed him to be the murderer of a young woman, and that the crime had intimations of sexual assault. The damage to his reputation could not be greater. .... His reputation as a murder will follow him wherever he goes. There will always be someone to whisper a false innuendo. . In the mind of Thomas Sophonow, he will always believe that people are talking about him and his implication in the murder. …

Innocent people are convicted each year because of mistaken eyewitness identification. This paper addresses both historical and more contemporary perspectives on the possible limitations of eyewitness identification. The primary purpose of this article is to describe some of the attempts made to protect the fact-finding process from misidentifications. The development and nature of guidelines and recommendations for the design and administration of identification lineups in the United States and in Canada are described. It has been estimated that approximately 4,500 innocent people are convicted each year in the United States because of mistaken eyewitness identification (Cutler & Penrod, 1995). Corresponding estimations have not been made for Canada but criminal misidentifications and wrongful convictions are not unique to the United States. The primary purpose of this paper is to describe some of the attempts in the United States and in Canada to protect the fact-finding process from misidentifications. Older Perspectives Recognition of problems underlying eyewitness memory is not new. Thucydides, an ancient historian of the Peloponnesian war (431-404 BC), noted a "want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eyewitnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect mcmuiy, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other "(cited in Levine & Tapp, 1973, p. 1088). Two centuries ago, a legal scholar writing in a handbook of criminal law and criminal politics stated: ... the identification procedure has to be preceded by a comprehensive interrogation of the witness, wherein he is to describe the characteristic features which could facilitate recognition of the persons or objects to which his testimony or statements refer. Thereafter, in the identification procedure itself, he is, whenever possible, to be confronted with several persons or objects resembling the one to be identified. He should be urged to point out, for example, the identified object, without hesitation, and also to give the reasons why he had identified this one as the real one instead of any of the others ... On the one hand, the investigator has to take care, to the best of his ability, to remove any changes that may have occurred in the object to be recognized and that may thus impair recognition: therefore, for example, he must not present the accused in his prison clothes, or with a distorting beard, etc. On the other hand, the investigator must beware of drawing the witness's attention to the correct object through facial expressions, gestures, or external signs that differentiate the object in question from others. (Henke, 1838, pp. 705-706; translation by Sporer, 1982) The Dawn of the 20th Century Although research interest in eyewitness testimony and identification escalated throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the empirical evidence and recommendations made by eyewitness researchers on how lineups should be designed and administered has had limited impact on the practices and decisions of the police and the courts until very recently (see Wells, Malpass, Lindsay, Fisher, Turtle, & Fulero, 2000). At the dawn of the 20th century several psychologists (e.g., Binet, 1900; Bolton, 1896; Cattell, 1895; Munsterberg, 1908; Stern, 1902, 1910; Whipple, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912) scientifically investigated the foundations and application of cognitive processes to legal issues. That is, they conducted applied experimental studies on perception and memory, suggestibility, confessions, lie detection, and hypnotism. Munsterberg (1908), in particular, was quite outspoken about the relevancy and application of his experiments on sensation, perception, and memory to better the court's understandings of eyewitness testimony. Munsterberg's complaints that the courts were unappreciative and unreasonable in not accepting the contributions of experimental psychology did not go unnoticed. …

Black and White mock jurors' sensitivity to the cross-race effect was investigated by varying the race of the eyewitness in a simulated murder trial of a Black defendant. Participants heard an audiotape of a trial after which they rendered a verdict and rated the credibility of the witnesses. White participants found the prosecution witnesses (including the eyewitness) more credible, and the defense witness less credible, than did Black participants; they were also more likely to find the defendant guilty. The Black eyewitness was perceived as more credible than was the White eyewitness, but eyewitness race had no effect on verdict. These results are consistent with the literature indicating that jurors of different races reach different verdicts, and also that jurors are relatively insensitive to factors that affect eyewitness testimony, such as the cross-race effect.

Children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities are especially likely to be sexually abused. Even so, their claims are not likely to be heard in court, possibly because people assume that jurors will not believe them. We tested this assumption in a mock-trial study in which 160 men and women watched videotaped excerpts from an actual trial. As predicted, when the 16-year-old sexual assault victim was portrayed as "mildly mentally retarded" instead of as "having average intelligence," jurors were more likely to vote guilty and had more confidence in the defendant's guilt; considered the victim to be more credible and the defendant to be less credible as witnesses; and rated the victim as more honest, less capable of fabricating the sexual abuse accusation, and less likely to have fabricated the sexual abuse accusation. Men and women were affected similarly by the disability manipulation, but women were generally more pro-prosecution in their case judgments and perceptions than were men. Finally, jurors who had more liberal views toward persons with disabilities were more likely than other jurors to make pro-prosecution judgments on measures of guilt. Implications for psychological theory and the law are discussed.

Previous research has reported that young adults are better at eyewitness face recognition than are older adults. However, these studies have used young adults as culprits and fillers. We explore how the relative ages of the witness and the culprit influence eyewitness accuracy in 2 experiments. In the first experiment, young (18-25 years old) and older (35-55 years old) adults each saw 4 crime videos. In 2 the culprit was a young adult and in 2 the culprit was an older adult. Participants were more accurate at identifying the culprit when viewing culprit present lineups comprising people of their own age: an "own age bias" analogous to the own race bias. In the 2nd experiment, using a similar procedure, young (18-33 years old) and older (40-55 years old) adults viewed both culprit present and culprit absent lineups. The results of the first experiment were replicated for the culprit present lineups. However, no own age bias was found for the culprit absent lineups. Implications for police procedures dealing with cross-generation identifications are discussed.

This study analyzed 271 actual police cases in order to address several prevalent issues in the eyewitness literature. Suspect identification (SI) rates were obtained for 289 photographic lineups, 258 field showups, 58 live lineups, and 66 lineup identifications preceded by earlier identifications. SI rates were assessed for 3 levels of extrinsic evidence: no extrinsic evidence, evidence of minimal probative value, and evidence of substantial probative value. The SI rates for the photographic lineups were assessed as a function of delay, same vs. cross-race conditions, witness type, and weapon presence. SI rates declined significantly over time; SI rates were significantly greater for the same-race condition. SI rates were much greater for field showups than photographic lineups, 76% vs. 48%. The SI rates for the field showups did not vary as a function of eyewitness conditions. The relation between confidence and suspect/foil identifications for the live lineups was significant and moderately high. The utility of archival identification studies for eyewitness testimony research is discussed.

Case studies, and more recently DNA testing in the United States, have shown that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more wrongful convictions than all other causes combined. It is argued that scientific laboratory and field research can contribute to the court's better understanding of those factors which contribute to both accurate and mistaken eyewitness recall and identification. Attention is given to the value of common knowledge in prediction of eyewitness memory performance, to the major critiques of expert eyewitness testimony, and to the worth of legal safeguards designed to prevent false identification leading to wrongful convictions. Expert eyewitness testimony provides an opportunity for the trier of fact to be assisted in decision-making such that convictions of innocent suspects may be minimized, and the just conviction of guilty suspects maximized. Eyewitnesses have been giving testimony in Englishspeaking courts since the late 16`" century. Expert testimony on eyewitness memory, however, is relatively recent and still an infrequent event. In fact, following the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Regina v. McIntosh and McCarthy (1997), expert eyewitness testimony in the province of Ontario appears to have been put on hold until further notice. The trial judge and the Court of Appeal in McIntosh and McCarthy concluded that expert testimony would not be more than common knowledge, and would not assist the jurors in their deliberations. The major purposes of this paper are to present an overview of some of the challenges an expert witness in eyewitness memory typically faces, some of the responses that can be made to these challenges, and some data from a recently completed study which addresses the notion that we have more to offer the courts than mere common sense. Nearly 100 years ago, Hugo Munsterberg (1908) argued that because experimental psychology concerns itself with the scientific study of human behaviour and experience, the results of laboratory studies on human perception and memory should be especially relevant to American courts' evaluations of witness testimony. Unfortunately, Munsterberg's proposals lacked sufficient empirical support and attacked the legal establishment for their lack of appreciation and endorsement of psychology's offerings. Justice Wigmore (1909) answered Munsterberg by writing a satirical and crushing review of his thesis. In spite of this relatively poor introduction to an integration of the psychology of testimony and law, Wigmore and other legal scholars of that period encouraged the application of scientifically valid research findings to the courts' better understanding of witness testimony (Sporer, 1982). Unlike Europe, there was little interest in America in developing a rapprochement between the psychology of testimony and the courts until the 1970s (e.g., Buckhout, 1974; Clifford & Bull, 1978; Loftus, 1979; Yarmey, 1979). Furthermore, unlike Munsterberg, contemporary psychology has not suggested that the courts submit to an alternative authority. Over the last two decades, valuable advances in the scientific understanding of eyewitness perception and memory have been made which can assist the court in their evaluations of eyewitnesses' reports. Furthermore, Canadian psychology students and law students now have a textbook (Schuller & Ogloff, in press) which emphasizes Canadian perspectives on an integration of the law and psychology, including eyewitness testimony (Read, Connolly, & Turtle, in press). MISTAKEN IDENTIFICATIONS The reality that eyewitnesses make errors and innocent people are convicted based upon faulty identifications is accepted by Canadian legal professionals (Brooks, 1983). Perhaps what is not fully appreciated is the fact that eyewitness misidentifications are the single most common cause of wrongful convictions (Huff, Rattne, & Sagarin, 1986). Next to an actual confession, eyewitness testimony has been described as the most incriminating evidence that can be introduced against an accused (Brandon & Davies, 1973). …

The consequences of psychologists' opinions are perhaps most strongly felt when offered in the context of a legal case. Due to this reality, courts are justifiably cautious when deciding whether to admit psychological testimony into evidence at trial. This commentary to the special section of Canadian Psychology on expert psychological testimony considers the circumstances under which expert psychological evidence ought to be deemed admissible. Drawing on the model of social analytic jurisprudence, guidelines are offered to psychologists for determining the propriety of their proposed testimony. As an undergraduate, one of us (Ogloff) conducted a research thesis in the area of eyewitness testimony. He was investigating whether hypnosis enhanced accurate eyewitness memory recall. During the course of the study, a family friend, a senior trial judge who later became Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench in Alberta, took great interest in his work. Flattered, Ogloff took the opportunity to inform him of the details of the work as it progressed. Upon completion of the work, Ogloff was amazed at just how poorly the "eyewitnesses" performed. With considerable excitement, he shared his concern about eyewitnesses with the judge. In turn, the judge asked him what legal reforms ought to be undertaken based on the thendeveloping body of eyewitness research. Being particularly naive about the legal system, Ogloff began to explain that psychologists should be involved in trials to inform judges and juries about the inherent limitations of eyewitness recall. For the first time in their discussions, Ogloff's excitement was met with stern resistance. The judge informed him that it was a judge's job to assess the extent to which an eyewitnesses' recall was - or was not - accurate. It was, the judge noted, a matter of common sense. It was clear that Ogloff had "stepped" on his judicial toes! The lesson taken from this anecdote has stayed with Ogloff and, in a very direct way, it speaks to the topic of the special section of Canadian Psychology on expert psychological testimony. In this article, we provide a brief overview of some of the issues concerning the admissibility of expert psychological opinion evidence. We discuss the role of expert testimony and outline the legal parameters of such evidence. Although we are sympathetic that there are cases where courts have incorrectly failed to admit psychological testimony into evidence at trial, we also highlight the opposite concern - that on occasion psychologists may overstate matters or otherwise mislead the courts. Drawing from the work of social analytic jurisprudence, we offer some general guidelines for psychologists and courts to help determine whether the expert psychological evidence being offered for admission into evidence at trial is sufficiently reliable and valid to assist the courts. Finally, we provide a brief introduction to this special section on expert psychological evidence. Psychology and the law share a common interest in understanding human behaviour (see Ogloff, 1992, 2000, in press; Ogloff & Finkelman, 1999). On occasion, courts actually require the evidence of psychologists - and other mental health professionals or social scientists - to help them make decisions. At trial, courts must resolve questions of law (e.g., whether some evidence is admissible, what is the interpretation of some aspect of a legal statute) and questions of fact (e.g., whether some event occurred, whether an accused intended to commit some act). Regardless of whether there is a jury, the judge is always the judge of the law and, as such, it is the judge who has the authority to resolve questions of law. By contrast, when there is a jury, it is the jury that is the trier of fact and, as such, it is the jury that is charged with resolving questions of fact. Of course, when the trial is being heard by a judge alone, the judge resolves both the legal and factual questions. …

The current article reviews the own-race bias (ORB) phenomenon in memory for human faces, the finding that own-race faces are better remembered when compared with memory for faces of another, less familiar race. Data were analyzed from 39 research articles, involving 91 independent samples and nearly 5,000 participants. Measures of hit and false alarm rates, and aggregate measures of discriminatio n accuracy and response criterion were examined, including an analysis of 8 study moderators. Several theoretical relationships were also assessed (i.e., the influence of racial attitudes and interracial contact). Overall, results indicated a "mirror effect" pattern in which own-race faces yielded a higher proportion of hits and a lower proportion of false alarms compared with other-race faces. Consistent with this effect, a significant ORB was also found in aggregate measures of discriminatio n accuracy and response criterion. The influence of perceptual learning and differentiation processes in the ORB are discussed, in addition to the practical implications of this phenomenon. She based her identification on Smith's eyes, which she said were greenish-blue and upon his hands which she said were "light and slender" like the holdup man's. Mrs. McCormick testified that Smith's eyes were "different from most colored people ... bright and piercing." Smith's defense attorneys then attempted to parry the state's first thrust in the trial. Mrs. McCormick was handed a picture of a man she couldn't identify. It was a picture of David Charles, with shorter hair, taken while he was in Vietnam. Assistant defense attorney Kitchen asked Mrs. McCormick if she had ever made the statement that all Black people look alike. "Yes, I made that statement," Mrs. McCormick said, "and they do to a certain extent, but there's a difference here" (Lickson, 1974, p. 66). In 1971, five Black men, who became known as the "Quincy Five," were wrongfully indicted for the murder of Khomas Revels during a robbery in Tallahassee, Florida. Although no forensic evidence obtained from the crime scene was ever linked to the men, five White eyewitnesses positively identified them as among the perpetrators. In each of three trials the state argued, "What better evidence can there be than, 'I saw him,' from unprejudiced witnesses? This has been used since time immemorial. This is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Five eyewitnesses!" (Lickson, 1974, p. 87). Despite the lack of physical evidence against these men, two of the defendants, Dave Roby Keaton and Johnny Frederick, were found guilty on the basis of eyewitness testimony and coerced confessions obtained by investigators . During the third trial involving David

This study examined how misleading suggestions from parents influenced children's eyewitness reports. Children (3 to 8 years old) participated in science demonstrations, listened to their parents read a story that described experienced and nonexperienced events, and subsequently discussed the science experience in two follow-up interviews. Many children described fictitious events in response to open-ended prompts, and there were no age differences in suggestibility during this phase of the interview. Accuracy declined markedly in response to direct questions, especially for the younger children. Although the older children retracted many of their false reports after receiving source-monitoring instructions, the younger children did not. Path analyses indicated that acquiescence, free recall, and source monitoring all contribute to mediating patterns of suggestibility across age. Results indicate that judgments about the accuracy of children's testimony must consider the possibility of exposure to misinformation prior to formal interviews. During the past decade, there has been keen interest in young children's performance when interviewed about autobiographical events. This interest was sharpened by broad social changes that led the public to be more concerned about crimes to which child victims are often the sole witnesses (e.g., child sexual abuse), but it also reflected a movement in psychology away from relatively artificial research paradigms (e.g., studies of memory for word lists) and toward more naturalistic and multifaceted approaches to research. Although the field of eyewitness testimony receives considerable attention for its forensic implications, researchers increasingly view eyewitness paradigms as tools for studying basic issues in memory and cognition. There have been several recent reviews of the literature on interviewing children for forensic purposes (e.g., Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Poole & Lamb, 1998), and we do not offer an exhaustive recapitulation here. In its broadest outlines, the literature can be

In light of recent advances, this study updated a prior survey of eyewitness experts (S. M. Kassin, P. C. Ellsworth, & V. L. Smith, 1989). Sixty-four psychologists were asked about their courtroom experiences and opinions on 30 eyewitness phenomena. By an agreement rate of at least 80%, there was a strong consensus that the following phenomena are sufficiently reliable to present in court: the wording of questions, lineup instructions, confidence malleability, mug-shot-induced bias, postevent information, child witness suggestibility, attitudes and expectations, hypnotic suggestibility, alcoholic intoxication, the crossrace bias, weapon focus, the accuracy-confidence correlation, the forgetting curve, exposure time, presentation format, and unconscious transference. Results also indicate that these experts set high standards before agreeing to testify. Despite limitations, these results should help to shape expert testimony so that it more accurately represents opinions in the scientific community.

This study investigated the influence of question format on preschool-aged children's errors, their response accuracy, and their tendency to say "I don't know" when given non-misleading questions in a neutral, unbiased context. Children (3 to 5 years old) participated in a craft-making session that included a staged "accident" with two experimenters differing in gender and appearance; the environment also had several distinctive features. One week later children were interviewed about actions, participants, and environment; questions were yes/no format with the veridical response "yes" ("yes" questions), yes/no format with the veridical response "no" ("no" questions), and specific wh- format questions. Question format substantially influenced children's responses: they were most likely to make errors if asked "no" questions, and were unlikely to answer either yes/no question with "I don't know." In contrast, children spontaneously and frequently said "I don't know" to wh- questions about content they did not recall (environment), but not about content that was well recalled (actions). Implications of question format for reliability of eyewitness testimony by preschoolers are discussed.

Currently, court cases of recovered memories of childhood abuse, in which the victim’s testimony may constitute the only evidence available, and a growing body of research demonstrating the inexactitude and suggestibility of autobiographical memory of long past events, are forcing courts and cognitive scientists to seek scientific, principled criteria for admissibility of such testimony. We use as examples two recent court cases. In the first case, a concussion produced total retrograde amnesia for an accident for a period of three years, and then, over a few months, the driver claimed his memory returned. In the second, two adults reported to the police that they witnessed their sister’s murder 35 years earlier, when they were three and five years old, respectively. We provide objective guidelines for courts to determine whether testimony about recovered or very long term memory for eyewitnessed events should be admissible. The principles we outline easily can be expanded to include eyewitness testimony in general.

Psychological research on eyewitness testimony has made important contributions to the measurement of lineup fairness. The mock witness task, and measures of functional size, effective size, and diagnosticity have proved useful both in application to real-world problems and to ongoing research aimed at the optimization of criminal investigation techniques. However, these measures are typically used in the absence of any inferential statistical considerations. This is unfortunate, since the mock witness task relies on an implicit probability model. An attempt is made in this paper to identify a suitable formal probability model for the mock witness task, and suggestions are made with respect to how to reason inferentially about many of the lineup measures developed in psycholegal research. It is important to reason inferentially about these measures, and a failure to do so may mislead those to whom measures of lineup fairness are presented.

In attempting to impeach an eyewitness, attorneys often highlight inconsistencies in the eyewitness's recall. This study examined the differential impact of types of inconsistent testimony on mock-juror decisions. Participants viewed 1 of 4 versions of a videotaped trial in which the primary evidence against the defendant was the testimony of the eyewitness. The types of inconsistent statements given by the eyewitness in the 4 versions were manipulated: (a) consistent testimony, (b) information given on the stand but not during the pretrial investigation, (c) contradictions between on-the-stand and pretrial statements, and (d) contradictions made on the stand. Participants exposed to any form of inconsistent testimony were less likely to convict and found the defendant less culpable and the eyewitness less effective. These effects were larger for contradictions than for information given on the stand but not during pretrial investigations.

Eyewitness expert testimony informs a jury about psychological processes and accuracy-related variables in eyewitness testimony. Appropriately chosen testimony is not prejudicial, and it is on sound scientific ground. Eyewitness research has established reliable, applicable findings and demonstrated that jurors have insufficient knowledge of some findings and poorly judge eyewitness accuracy. Studies of trial dynamics and reactions to eyewitnesses suggest a sizable risk of inordinate eyewitness impact, creating sizable risk of conviction on the basis of mistaken identifications. Trial simulations examining eyewitness expert testimony indicate it promotes modest, appropriate increases in skepticism about eyewitnesses, even when the expert gives a general overview of research and admits to limitations. The psychological and legal professions should develop responsible guidelines for use of expert testimony in court.

In Experiment 1, 32 5- to 6-year-old boys and girls participated in a unique event and were interviewed about that event I day later. Half of the children were asked to draw what happened during the event and half were asked to tell what happened. In both conditions, only children's verbal behavior was scored. Children in the draw group were as accurate and reported more information than children in the tell group, especially in response to direct questions. In Experiment 2, 32 5- to 6-year-olds and 32 3- to 4-year-olds participated in the same event used in Experiment I and were interviewed I month later. The 5- to 6-year-olds in the draw group reported more information than the 5- to 6-year-olds in the tell group after the 1-month delay. Drawing did not, however, increase the amount of information reported by 3- to 4-year-olds. These findings have important theoretical implications for memory development and important practical implications for children's eyewitness testimony.

This research examined the effectiveness of voir dire as a legal safeguard in eyewitness cases. For voir dire to serve as an effective safeguard, attorneys must be able to identify and excuse prospective jurors who are unable or unwilling to critically evaluate eyewitness testimony. On the basis of previous research, we hypothesized that attitudes toward eyewitnesses would correlate significantly with jurors' perceptions of defendant culpability in a case in which eyewitness identification plays a pivotal role. We developed a measure of these attitudes and its internal consistency was established. In two trial simulation studies, attitudes toward eyewitnesses correlated weakly and nonsignificantly (p >.05) with mock-juror perceptions of defendant culpability, casting doubt on the effectiveness of voir dire as a safeguard

Echoing McCloskey and Egeth (1983), and motivated by Kassin, Ellsworth, and Smith's (1989) survey of 63 eyewitness experts, Elliott (1993) recently attacked the use of psychological experts on eyewitness testimony. There are two principal shortcomings of this critique. First, it misrepresents the eyewitness literature and the experts who use it. Second, it merely parrots complaints of the past. The same old arguments are made about the lack of sufficient research evidence, the standards by which experts should conduct their affairs, and the impact of it all on the jury. Perhaps the field needs periodic prodding and consciousness-raising on this issue, but there is very little in this critique that is imaginative or new compared to those that preceded it. And what is new is based on an irresponsible review of the literature.

This study examined witnesses' memories for an event experienced 2 years earlier. Ss in 4 age groups (6-, 8- and 10-year-olds and adults; N= 79) answered repeated questions about an ambiguous incident that occurred as part of an earlier study (D. A. Poole & L. T. White, 1991). Surprisingly, the effects of question repetition were similar to the patterns observed 2 years ago. There were important differences in the testimonies of children and adults, however, that were not observed in the initial study: Children were less consistent than adults across sessions on yes-no questions, less accurate in response to open-ended questions, and more likely to fabricate answers to a question about a man's occupation. Some children also confused the actions of 2 research assistants. These results indicate the need for additional research on qualitative and quantitative changes in children's testimonies over long delays. The literature on children's eyewitness testimony is a story of contradictions, with developmental trends in accuracy, suggestibility, and response to stress differing from study to study (see Ceci & Bruck, 1993, for a review). Discrepancies have prompted critics to argue that eyewitness research lacks theoretical cohesion and that "established theories of perception and memory are not immediately applicable" because of the influence of motivational and social factors in event reporting (Sheehy & Chapman, 1982, p. 345). In early studies, concerns about ecological validity often loomed larger than efforts to reconcile eyewitness findings with traditional concepts of memory development.

The effects of age of witness, gender of witness, lineup presentation, and practice on eyewitness testimony were investigated. Ninety-six elementary-school children and 96 college students viewed a slide sequence of a crime, followed by target-present or target-absent photo identification in sequentially or simultaneously presented lineups. Prior to photo identification, half the subjects received a practice lineup. Children had a higher rate of choosing than adults, resulting in more foil identification errors in both target-present and target-absent lineups. Without prior practice, sequential presentation as compared to simultaneous presentation reduced errors in target-absent lineups for adult witnesses and showed a similar but nonsignificant reduction for child witnesses. With prior practice, sequential presentation lost the advantage over simultaneous presentation in target-absent error reduction. Practice reduced target-absent errors in simultaneous-presentation lineups for both age groups.

Alfred Binet is famous as the author of the IQ test that bears his name. He is almost unkown, however, as the investigator who generated numerous fascinating investigations into developmental, experimental, educational, and social psychology. This «other» Binet generated tasks, findings, and interpretations that foreshadowed current work on children's understanding of number conservation, validity of children's eyewitness testimony, the constructive nature of memory, effects of group pressure on conformity, and individual differences in cognitive styles. This article reviews Binet's major contributions, considers why the fame of his intelligence scale was so lasting and why that of his other contributions was so fleeting, and discusses implications of his contributions for current efforts to formulate unified theories of cognition and cognitive development

Loftus and her colleagues demonstrated distorted reports of memory for an event in the direction of postevent misleading information. McCloskey and Zaragoza argued that these results do not necessarily imply a weakening of the memory for the original event. They obtained evidence supporting their position by using a modified recognition test. In this experiment we introduced still another modification to the recognition test ("Yes'VNo" instead of forced choice) to answer McCloskey and Zaragoza's objections to Loftus and her colleagues' procedures. We obtained evidence for distorted reports of original information as a consequence of the misleading information. Memory and confidence data support an interference or inaccessibility interpretation of the memory errors but cannot rule out overwriting of the original information in some cases. In a series of studies that can by now be considered classic, Loftus and her colleagues (e.g., Loftus, 1979; Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978) showed that misleading postevent information impairs memory report of an original event. The fate of the memory for the original event has become a matter of debate; some say that it is overwritten, others say that it is rendered less accessible, and still others say that there is no evidence that anything has happened to it at all. In all of the experiments, subjects first viewed a sequence

A total of 1,242 subjects, in five experiments plus a pilot study, saw a series of slides depicting a single auto-pedestrian accident. The purpose of these experiments was to investigate how information supplied after an event influences a witness's memory for that event. Subjects were exposed to either consistent, misleading, or irrelevant information after the accident event. Misleading information produced less accurate responding on both a yes-no and a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test. Further, misleading information had a larger impact if introduced just prior to a final test rather than immediately after the initial event. The effects of misleading information cannot be accounted for by a simple demand-characteristics explanation. Overall, the results suggest that information to which a witness is exposed after an event, whether that information is consistent or misleading, is integrated into the witness's memory of the event.

Experimental psychologists serving as expert witnesses must consider the following question: “What ethical principles govern their statments made in expert testimony?” Two interrelated issues are involved. The first focuses upon the consideration of selectivity exercised when psychological research is described to a judge or jury. The second centers upon consideration of those principles that constitute an adequate basis for a statement made in expert testimony. These principles are explained using the literature from eyewitness testimony and cross-racial identification as descriptive instances. It was concluded that experts have the responsibility of giving the courts clear and unambiguous conceptual insights through selective explanations of all relevant findings and theoretical implications. Relevancy is defined in terms of studies that meet established standards of scientific criteria.

Five studies examined how college students react to child eyewitnesses in criminal cases. In Study 1, subjects made predictions about a staged crime study involving eyewitnesses of varying age. The actual study found no age differences, yet subjects predicted poorer recall (but not face recognition) for children under 10 than for those 12 and over. In Studies 2–5, subjects read and reacted to written criminal cases in which the principal prosecution eyewitness was either a child or an adult. In Study 2, a 6-year-old eyewitness was judged less credible than an adult eyewitness, and fewer guilty judgments were rendered when the eyewitness was 6 or 10 years old (versus an adult) and the prosecution case was otherwise strong. In Study 3, apparent inconsistency lowered the credibility of a 6-year-old eyewitness but not of a 10-or 30-year-old eyewitness. These studies presented a narrative description of the trial and the testimony. In Study 4, a transcript of testimony was also presented. Here a 6-year-old eyewitness was judged more credible than an adult eyewitness, and more guilty judgments were rendered (before and after jury deliberation) when the case included, the child eyewitness. Study 5 manipulated the description-or-transcript distinction and observed a bias against cases with a child eyewitness when mock-jurors simply knew eyewitness age (as in Study 2) and a bias favoring these cases when mock-jurors read the eyewitness testimony (as in Study 4). This pattern suggests the important roles of jurors' preconceptions, eyewitness behaviors, and whether the latter confirm or disconfirm the former.

This article responds to concerns about expert testimony in experimental psychology by conjectur that disagreements about the propriety of the testimony are camouflaged arguments about the strength of psychological knowledge. Differences between proponents and opponents of expert testimony are about the state of psychological knowledge and certainty, rather than about the proper standard for psychologists to use when deciding whether to testify. A second conjecture is stimulated by the assumption that laypersons generally overvalue eyewitness testimony and that expert psychological testimony is a required corrective. The truth of this assumption rests on the debatable assertions that eyewitness identifications, without more, are potent sole determinants of trial outcome, and that lay juries need instruction from experimental psychologists about aspects of human behavior of which the jurors are definitive producers and consumers. One need not resolve these debates in order to understand that psychologists should not rely on the legal community to set the psychologists' standards for expert testimony. And psychologists, in considering their role as courtroom experts, should guard against a self-serving critique of the acumen of lay juries.

Children testify in courts of law, yet little is known about jurors' reactions to them. We describe the first studies of simulated jurors' reactions to child as compared to adult witnesses. Our methodology involved exposing mock jurors to trial descriptions. In the descriptions, the age of the eyewitness who provided crucial testimony varied. Across three experiments, potential jurors judged children to be less credible eyewitnesses than adults. Eyewitness age did not, however, determine the degree of guilt attributed to the defendant. This same pattern of results was found regardless of the sample tested (college students versus a more heterogeneous group), the type of trial presented (vehicular homicide versus murder), or the medium employed (written trial descriptions versus videotaped mock trial). Our findings indicate that biases against children's credibility are likely to appear when a child bystander witness takes the stand.

Psychological research on eyewitness testimony has flourished over the last decade and there are now a number of findings that appear relevant to police and courts. We review some of the major eyewitness research findings regarding such things as the relationship between accuracy and confidence, the identification of perpetrators from lineups, and the influence of misleading information on eyewitness memory and reports. Next, we discuss a controversy over the application of eyewitness research in the courtroom, namely expert testimony. The debate regarding expert testimony has sharpened researchers' conceptions of generalization problems and the quality of jurors' knowledge about eyewitness accuracy, as well as raising concerns about the proper role of experimental psychologists in the legal system. We propose that the confusion and controversy over expert testimony stems largely from the fact that expert testimony represents an attempt to provide services to the judicial phase, rather than the evidence-production phase, of the fact-finding process.