Missing person alerts: does repeated exposure decrease their effectiveness?

Objectives

Prospective person memory refers to situations where one is asked to be on the lookout for a missing or wanted individual. Some researchers have hypothesized that because people see missing person alerts for multiple people over a period of time, that people habituate to missing persons alerts much like they do to car alarms. The purpose of this research was to test that hypothesis.

Methods

Some participants saw three different mock missing person videos, depicting three different target individuals, with one video being shown on each of 3 days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). Other participants engaged in unrelated tasks on the first 2 days and saw a single mock missing person video on the third day. All participants were told that if they saw a person from a mock missing person video and contacted the experimenters they would win a cash prize. On the final day of the study, the target individual was located in the hallway a short distance from the experiment room in a location that participants had to pass on their way out of the building.

Results

Correct sightings of the target individual were significantly lower in the multiple video condition than in the single video condition.

Conclusions

The results suggest that overuse of missing person alert systems can decrease their effectiveness in a manner consistent with a “car alarm” effect.

     

The Effect of Wanted Posters on Prospective and Retrospective Memory

The experiment tested prospective and retrospective memory for a person pictured on a wanted poster. Participants monitored the videotaped activity of a computer lab; one of their duties involved reporting if they saw a computer hacker. Half viewed a wanted poster of the hacker before the monitoring task and half after. For half the participants, the hacker appeared during monitoring and for half not. A diagnosticity ratio comparing the correct prospective memory identifications with false positive identifications showed that a prospective identification was 3.35 times more likely to be accurate than inaccurate. For those viewing the wanted poster after monitoring, the diagnosticity ratio was 1.21. Based on diagnosticity, a prospective identification had more value than a retrospective identification.     

Associated Adults: Prospective Person Memory for Family Abducted Children

In family abductions, authorities sometimes release pictures of both missing children and associated adults. The effectiveness of this approach was tested in a prospective person memory experiment. Participants studied mock missing child posters including a picture of a child, a picture of a child alongside a picture of the correct adult, or a picture of a child alongside a picture of the incorrect adult. Participants then saw pictures of child/adult pairs with instructions to make a response to ‘alert authorities’ if the target individuals were seen. Including the picture of the correct adult on the poster, significantly improved recognition relative to the other two conditions. There was no significant effect of including the picture of the incorrect associated adult.     

The application of multiple lineups in a field study

Abstract

The usefulness of multiple lineups was tested in a field experiment with nine different targets. Six hundred and forty-eight passers-by were asked for directions in the pedestrian zone of a university town. Subsequently, they were approached by a different person and asked to identify the target from portrait, body, and profile lineups. Additionally, participants were asked to identify a shopping bag that the target had carried. Two of the lineups were target-present, and two target-absent. Diagnosticity ratios (DRs) were computed for target/suspect choices, lineup rejections and foil choices. Compared to foil choices and rejections, target/suspect choices were most diagnostic of guilt. Here, the combination of lineups was superior over individual lineups. Lineup rejections showed some capability of establishing innocence, but with lower DRs than target/suspect choices. Here, combinations did not increase diagnosticity. The diagnosticity of multiple foil choices was acceptable for portrait face lineups but limited for all other lineups or combinations.     

Memory conformity and suggestibility

Abstract

The present study examined whether the degree to which participants engage in memory conformity, which occurs when a person alters their memory report of an event to be consistent with another person, can be predicted by their levels of interrogative suggestibility (IS), which is the degree to which people are susceptible to altering their memory reports during questioning. Memory conformity was introduced by having participant and confederate pairs study words and then complete a social recognition test where they took turns to make judgements to the same items. When the participants responded after the confederate, they tended to conform to confederate's judgements regardless of whether the confederate had made a correct or incorrect response. IS was measured using the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2. This scale allows separate measures of Yield, which is a measure of how susceptible people are to altering their memory reports of events as a result of leading questions, and Shift, which is a measure of how susceptible people are to changing responses to questions when placed under pressure to do so. Only Yield was a significant predictor of memory conformity.     

The Ada Sheriffs Youth Foundation: The development of a decentralized youth program

This article describes the Ada Sheriffs Youth Foundation (SYF), a program that provides after-school enrichment activities carried out by individual schools. At the time of evaluation, the Foundation had organized early intervention action (EIA) teams in thirty-one elementary schools. The teams identified and linked troubled youth to local community programs. The program, similar in principle to comprehensive prevention programs, differed in that decision making about participants was decentralized, youth were not grouped, and the participants themselves decided what programs they wanted to participate in. An analysis of youths' at-risk scores before and after program participation showed significant improvement in many dimensions of risk. The article concludes with a discussion of issues related to the integrity of program delivery.     

图片再认ERP在重型颅脑损伤后记忆障碍鉴定的应用

目的探讨图片再认事件相关电位（ERP）对重型颅脑损伤（sTBI）后记忆障碍法医学鉴定的应用价值。方法采用韦氏记忆量表（WMS—RC）和Neuroscan ERP仪,对74例健康志愿者（对照组）及需评定精神伤残等级的29例重型颅脑损伤后记忆障碍者（sTBI组）进行记忆能力和图片再认ERP检测。结果sTBI组WMS-RC各分测验量表分及记忆商数（MQ）均值均明显低于对照组（P〈0．01）;完成ERP任务的反应时、正确率明显延长和降低（P〈0．01）。对照组在靶与非靶刺激呈现后170ms和500ms左右均可记录到潜伏期无显著性差异的二个正向波（P170和P500）,但靶刺激诱发的P500波幅明显高于非靶刺激（P〈0．01）;sTBI组可记录到相似的ERP波形,但各成分的波幅、潜伏期均明显降低和延长（P〈0．01）。sTBI组P500潜伏期与WMS—RC的记图、再认、再生分测验量表分和MQ值均呈高度负相关（r=-0．73～-0．83,P〈0．01）,而与伤残等级呈明显正相关（r=0．65,P〈0．01）。结论图片再认诱发的Psoo潜伏期与WMS-RC反映的短时记忆功能及鉴定的精神伤残等级明显相关,可为sTBI后记忆障碍的伤残鉴定提供一项较客观的神经电生理依据。     

Eyewitnesses: A comparison of live,video, and photo line-ups

An experiment was conducted in which the effectiveness of three line-up methods (live, video, and photographs) was compared. Participants witnessed a staged event and were subsequently required, by one of the three methods, to identify the target. Both target-present and target-absent line-ups were used. The results showed that all methods led to an equal number of correct identifications (hits). In the target-absent line-ups, participants more often incorrectly identified a person in the video and photographs condition than in the live condition. Presenting photographs simultaneously or sequentially did not affect the number of correct judgments. Dynamic video images, showing locomotion and facial expression, had a marginal significant effect on the number of correct judgments as compared with the static video images. Practical implications are discussed.     

Taking Responsibility for an Act Not Committed: The Influence of Age and Suggestibility

Inherent in false confessions is a person taking responsibility for an act he or she did not commit. The risk of taking such responsibility may be elevated in juveniles. To study possible factors that influence individuals' likelihood for taking responsibility for something they did not do, participants in a laboratory experiment were led to believe they crashed a computer when in fact they had not. Participants from 3 age groups were tested: 12- and 13-year-olds, 15- and 16-year-olds, and young adults. Half of the participants in each age group were presented with false evidence indicating liability. Additionally, suggestibility was investigated as a potential individual-difference factor affecting vulnerability to admissions of guilt. Results showed that younger and more suggestible participants were more likely than older and less suggestible participants to falsely take responsibility. Implications of these findings for juvenile justice are discussed.     

Group size,misinformation and unanimity influences on co-witness judgements

Researchers have typically observed the effects of co-witness influence on eyewitness pairs. However, research suggests that individuals are more likely to witness crimes in larger groups. Additionally, there is an abundance of evidence suggesting that social influence is heavily moderated by group size. Therefore, the present study aimed to gain a more accurate understanding of the risks of co-witness influence in relation to unanimity and group size effects. Participants (N = 608) viewed and discussed a CCTV footage of a fight breaking out, with co-witnesses, before giving individual statements, where they were asked to identify which person had started the fight; confederates were used to suggest that the wrong man had started the fight. Results indicated that participants were vulnerable to co-witness influence, but only when exposed to misinformation from a majority of co-witnesses. Misinformation presented by an individual confederate did not have a significant influence over the participants’ responses. This study was the first to investigate the effects of group size on blame attribution. The findings suggest that the true risks of co-witness influence may not be as high as originally predicted from research on eyewitness pairs.     

Distributive Justice and the Allocation of Costs,Losses, and Profits

In an experimental study, participants read a scenario about five business partners who sold plants at a flea market. Each partner obtained a different outcome and still had to pay the costs of the partnership. Participants either had to indicate what they considered to be a fair distribution of the costs (given each individual partner's earnings) or what they considered to be a fair distribution of the net results (the total outcome minus the costs). The total outcome was either higher or lower than the costs (i.e., the enterprise resulted in a net profit or a net loss). The results indicate that fairness judgments are affected by the target of distribution. Negative outcomes are distributed differently than positive outcomes, and within the domain of negative outcomes, marked differences are observed between costs and net losses. The results are explained in terms of the differential salience of the distribution of the net result.     

Simulating amnesia and memories of a mock crime

Abstract

Defendants often feign (i.e. simulate) dissociative amnesia for their crimes. The Symptom Validity Test (SVT) may be used to detect such feigning. Some studies have shown that feigning amnesia for a mock crime has memory-undermining effects. In this study, we wanted to replicate the memory-undermining effects of simulated amnesia. We also examined whether such effects would occur when participants’ memories were evaluated with a SVT. Thirty participants committed a mock crime and then simulated amnesia for it. During a follow-up test, participants were instructed to perform as well as they could on a free recall test and a SVT. Their memory performance was compared with that of a control group (n=30). Although only a minority of simulating participants (7%) was detected by our SVT, the memory-undermining effect of simulating amnesia appeared to be a robust phenomenon. That is, ex-simulators displayed poorer free recall, more commission errors, and lower SVT scores relative to memory performance of honestly responding controls. However, at follow-up testing the poor memory of ex-simulators did not take the form of a real amnesia (i.e. random performance on SVT).     

Confidence and accuracy of eyewitness identification from lineups

Recent studies of confidence-accuracy correlations in eyewitness-identification experiments have produced highly variable results (Deffenbacher, 1980; Wells & Murray, 1984) with some correlations near 0 (Malpass & Devine, 1981) and others as high as 0.5 (Brigham et al., 1982). Much of this variability may be accounted for by differences, in the design of the research. Specifically, lineup experiments in which the to-be-identified person (target) is always present tend to produce higher confidence-accuracy correlations than studies also providing blank or target-absent lineups replacing the target with a lookalike. A reanalysis of previously collected data (Lindsay & Wells, 1980; Wallbridge & Lindsay, 1982) revealed that lineup foils (nontargets) were identified with significantly less confidence than targets or lookalikes but that targets and lookalikes were identified with equal confidence. Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that confidence of identification is a function of the similarity of the identified person to the original target. The first experiment using nonstudent subjects (n=53) and multiple targets (n=14) to increase generalizability, demonstrated that the person in the lineup who most closely resembled the target was identified with the highest mean level of confidence. The second experiment examined confidence in identification following a crime staged for 260 introductory psychology students. The results indicated that the similarity of foils to the target (established by independent ratings) was predictive of both the frequency and confidence of identification of faces.     

Rugoscopy: Predominant Pattern,Uniqueness, and Stability Assessment in the Indian Goan Population

The palatine rugae possess unique characteristics that could be used when it is difficult to identify a dead person according to fingerprints or dental records. They are permanent and unique to each person. The rugae are surrounded by cheeks, lips, tongue, and buccal pad of fat; hence, they remain protected in trauma, incineration, or mass disasters. Their pattern of orientation is formed by the 12th to 14th week of gestation and remains stable throughout life. In this study, dental casts of 120 patients were analyzed for individual rugae characteristics and strength and subsequent individual codes were given. No two individuals were having exactly matching rugae codes. Dimensions of rugae pattern, incisive papilla, and midpalatal raphe were also noted. Rugae were reevaluated after one year to check its stability, which showed no significant difference. The coding system followed can be adopted as a good and simple technique to achieve electronic transfer of the records of the palatal rugae.     

How reliable are eyewitness memories? Effects of retention interval,violence of act,and gender stereotypes on observers' judgments of their own memory regarding witnessed act and perpetrator

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of (i) stimulus person's gender, (ii) type of act (neutral or violent), and (iii) retention interval (short or long) on observers' memory of a stimulus person. Participants were presented with one of two acts: neutral (walking around in a store) or violent (robbing a store). The retention interval was 10 minutes or one–three weeks. The dependent variables were questionnaire items concerning the participants' memory of (1) the stimulus person's appearance and (2) the event, and (3) rating scales where the participants were asked to evaluate the stimulus person's aggressiveness, insensitivity, and other personality traits as well as characteristics of the act. Results showed that when the act was violent, and a long retention interval was used, a female, but not a male, stimulus person was evaluated less harshly than with a short retention interval (enhancement of gender stereotype); a stimulus person was seen as behaving in a more masculine way when performing a violent rather than a neutral act; witnessing the violent act resulted in better self-rated memory of the stimulus person; and with increasing retention interval, the violent act was seen as less negative and the neutral act as more negative (regression toward the mean).     

On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World: Imitating the Behaviors of Others Reduces the Blaming of Innocent Victims

Innocent victims of crime are often blamed for what happened to them. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that victim blaming can be significantly reduced when people mimic the behavior of the victim or even a person unrelated to the crime. Participants watched a person on a video after which we assessed the extent of their spontaneous mimicry reactions (Study 1) or participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of this person (Study 2). Then, they were informed about a rape and criminal assault and judged the degree to which they thought the victims were responsible for the crime. One of the crimes happened to the same person as the person they previously did or did not mimic. The other crime happened to a person unrelated to the mimicry situation. Results of both studies revealed that previously mimicking the victim or an unrelated person reduced the degree to which victims were being blamed.     

Assessment of sexual interest using a choice reaction time task and priming: A feasibility study

Purpose. We investigated the feasibility of assessing sexual interest in hetero‐ and homosexual men using two information‐processing methods, namely a choice reaction time task and priming. The participants were expected to have longer reaction times for sexually explicit when compared with non‐explicit pictures due to sexual content‐induced delay. In addition, the reaction times of the heterosexual (N=15) and homosexual (N=11) men for pictures corresponding with their sexual interest were compared to pictures not corresponding with their sexual interest. Heterosexual men were expected to have longer reaction times during the presentation of sexually explicit female as opposed to male pictures, whereas homosexual men were expected to have the opposite pattern. Method. The participants were presented either sexually explicit or non‐explicit male and female target pictures (and primes that preceded the targets in random combinations) while simultaneously performing a choice reaction time task in three phases each containing a total of 160 prime–target pairs. Results. Both expectations were confirmed in phase 1 of the study. In phase 2, the means differed in the expected way, but the effects were not significant. In phase 3, the expected effect was moderated by a complex priming effect. Conclusions. The results suggest that the choice reaction time task is a promising way of measuring sexual interest but that questions of habituation should be given more attention in future studies.     

Evidence for the role of the justice motive in status generalization processes

Status generalization refers to the capacity of status characteristics, such as race, gender, or occupation, to become the basis of social inequality even when such characteristics are not directly relevant to the immediate social interaction. For instance, individuals with positively valued status characteristics are more likely to assume positions of power and prestige than those of lower standing. To date, status generalization has been assumed to arise from stereotyped beliefs that associate positive standing on a status characteristic with positively valued personal attributes. Findings from two studies indicate that the capacity for status characteristics to produce power and prestige orders may also depend on people's need to believe in a just world. In the first study, participants were fortuitously granted a position of either superior or equal power and prestige to another person. Consistent with just world predictions, participants portrayed themselves more positively relative to the other on assessments of personal attributes when they occupied a superior position than when they occupied a position of equal power and prestige. Results from a second study showed that the tendency to link personal attributes with power and prestige standing was strongest for participants who scored high on the Just World Scale. Thus, just world beliefs appear to play a role in status generalization processes.     

Equity: Effects of Input and Outcome Orientation on Taking, Giving, and Dividing Money

Participants who were more inclined to consider ambiguous work elements as inputs (input-oriented or Type-I persons) or as outcomes (outcome-oriented or Type-O persons) were presented with situations in which they had delivered a higher or lower work performance than another person. They were asked to take money for themselves, give money to the other person, and divide a fixed sum of money between themselves and the other as reward for the performances. The specific combination of (input or outcome) orientation of the participant and the type of transfer (giving, taking, or dividing) determined the reward the participant allocated to him- or herself and/or to the other person. Type-I persons showed an egocentric bias in their allocation behavior, whereas Type-O persons allocated according to a maximin strategy.