Browsing by Author "Snow, Mark D."

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

An examination of the impact of corroborator age on alibi assessment
(2018-06-01) Snow, Mark D.; Eastwood, Joseph
The purpose of the current research was to assess the impact of the age of an alibi corroborator on the perceptions and decision-making of alibi assessors. Across two studies, adult participants were asked to assume the role of a police detective and to assess the alibi of an armed robbery suspect. The alibi contained a single individual that was willing to verify the suspect’s account (i.e., an alibi corroborator). In Study 1, I examined the impact of the alibi corroborator’s age (i.e., 8-year-old vs. 25-year-old) and relationship with the suspect (i.e., stranger vs. neighbour vs. son) on ratings of five dependent measures related to corroborator credibility and suspect guilt. In Study 2, I examined the impact of the alibi corroborator’s age (i.e., 4-year-old vs. 8-year-old vs. 25-year-old) and the level of cognition needed to remember the alibi event (i.e., delayed vs. recent event) on the same five dependent measures. Consistent with a two-factor model of witness credibility, results indicated that participants viewed an 8-year-old corroborator more favourably than a 4- or 25-year-old corroborator. Participants also demonstrated increased skepticism when the corroborator was interviewed after a longer delay as well as when the corroborator was related to the suspect. The current results help to shed light on an existing inconsistency in the alibi literature regarding the impact of corroborator age on alibi assessment outcomes.
Negative emotion and eyewitness memory
(2022-12-01) Snow, Mark D.; Eastwood, Joseph
Witnessing or being the victim of a crime is often emotionally distressing, and this emotional distress reaction can influence the storage and retrieval of event-related memory. Eyewitness memory, therefore, cannot be adequately understood without an account of the memorial effects of negative emotion. On this point, however, there remains a considerable degree of inconsistency in both the methods and findings of existing research. In this dissertation I sought to clarify the nature of this effect. Across two experiments, participants (N = 204, N = 132) viewed either a Negative or Neutral version of a video of a staged social interaction. Either immediately or after a one-week delay, participants reported their memory for the video. I assessed participants’ recall (Study 1 and 2) and lineup identification (Study 1) performance. In both studies, those who viewed the Negative version of the video demonstrated superior recall performance for central event details than did those who viewed the Neutral version, though this did not appear to extend to lineup identification performance (Study 1). The Negative video group also reported more subjective and vague information than did the Neutral group. The current results, together with that of a growing number of studies, provide grounds for doubting the prevailing view among eyewitness researchers – that emotional distress causes generalized impairment of eyewitness memory. The current findings speak in favor of a pattern of selective memory enhancement. I end with a discussion of several practical and theoretical issues that were brought to the fore in the present work.