RUI: Understanding unconscious transference and improving lineup identification accuracy in adult and elderly witnesses

RUI：了解无意识转移并提高成人和老年证人的阵容识别准确性

• 批准号: 0321592
• 负责人: David Ross
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Tennessee Chattanooga
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-08-01 至 2005-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0321592&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RUI; Understanding; unconscious; transference; improving

Unconscious transference occurs when an eyewitness misidentifies a familiar but innocent person from a police lineup. This phenomenon has been studied with young adult participants and with children ranging from 5-12 years of age. This research project expands the work on this important topic by replicating the aforementioned studies using middle-aged and elderly participants. The intellectual merit of the proposal is addressed in the following ways. First, these studies represent one of the first attempts to examine unconscious transference in the elderly. The results from the elderly and adult samples are compared with those obtained with the child and young adult samples. This permits a unique developmental examination of unconscious transference, as well as other memory phenomena, across the life span because the same methodology has been used in each study. According to recent U.S. Census data, the elderly population in the United States is steadily increasing. Moreover, based on U.S. Bureau of Crime Statistics reports, the elderly are likely to be victims of crimes where they would be called to provide eyewitness testimony. Specifically, the elderly are very likely to be victims of crimes in which they see and/or interact with the perpetrator. Thus, it is extremely important to determine the factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness judgments in older adults. Second, these experiments are theoretically motivated to determine not only if unconscious transference occurs, but also to identify the mechanism producing the effect and whether it varies by the age of the witness. Third, the researchers examine how to improve eyewitness identification accuracy in general, and reduce unconscious transference, in particular, by providing the witness with a lineup instruction that would help him or her identify the source of the memory for the assailant. Fourth, the researchers examine whether the participants demonstrate a "Pop Out" effect and reach their lineup decisions faster (within a range of 10-12 seconds) and use an automatic process as compared to inaccurate witnesses who use a slower, more deliberate process of elimination procedure when making a lineup identification. Fifth, because the researchers have included an array of recognition and meta-cognition measures, they can explore other important memory issues that are related to unconscious transference but which span beyond that topic as well. Consequently, the proposed research addresses the broader impact criteria as it has theoretical and applied importance. The results of this research provide a major contribution to the literatures in human development, memory, and the law because it investigates a variety of memory processes, as well as unconscious transference, and provide empirically-derived suggestions on how to improve the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.

无意识的移情发生在目击者从警察的阵容中误认一个熟悉但无辜的人时。对这一现象进行了研究，对象是年轻的成年人和5-12岁的儿童。该研究项目通过使用中年和老年参与者复制上述研究来扩展这一重要主题的工作。从以下几个方面论述了该建议的知识价值。首先，这些研究代表了对老年人无意识移情的首次尝试之一。将老年人和成人样品的结果与儿童和年轻成人样品的结果进行比较。这允许一个独特的发展检查无意识的移情，以及其他记忆现象，在整个生命周期，因为相同的方法已被用于每项研究。根据最近的美国人口普查数据，美国的老年人口正在稳步增长。此外，根据美国犯罪统计局的报告，老年人很可能是犯罪的受害者，他们将被要求提供目击证人证词。具体而言，老年人很可能是犯罪的受害者，他们看到和/或与犯罪者互动。因此，确定影响老年人目击者判断准确性的因素是非常重要的。第二，这些实验的理论动机不仅是为了确定无意识移情是否发生，而且也是为了确定产生这种效果的机制，以及它是否随证人的年龄而变化。第三，研究人员研究了如何提高目击者识别的准确性，特别是通过向目击者提供列队指示来帮助他或她识别攻击者的记忆来源，从而减少无意识的转移。第四，研究人员检查参与者是否表现出“弹出”效应，并更快地（在10-12秒的范围内）做出他们的阵容决定，并使用自动过程，而不准确的证人在进行阵容识别时使用较慢，更深思熟虑的排除程序。第五，因为研究人员已经纳入了一系列识别和元认知测量，他们可以探索与无意识移情有关的其他重要记忆问题，但这些问题也超出了这个主题。因此，拟议的研究解决了更广泛的影响标准，因为它具有理论和应用的重要性。这项研究的结果为人类发展，记忆和法律方面的文献做出了重大贡献，因为它调查了各种记忆过程，以及无意识的移情，并就如何提高目击者识别的准确性提供了理论上的建议。