Faculty Mentor: Kara Moore (Psychology, University of Utah)

Conducting research on eyewitness identification has been a challenging and intellectually rewarding experience. Being part of the Cognition, Attention, Law, and Memory Lab, allowed me along with my Mentor, Dr. Moore, to develop a research project that focused on the relationship between eyewitness identification accuracy and response time, using data from a previous study conducted by my mentor, where virtual reality (VR) was used to simulate an ecologically valid eyewitness experience. The original study aimed to investigate the relationship between eyewitness identification accuracy and their confidence statements under pristine conditions using virtual reality, and whether participant age influenced this relationship.

I was lucky to be part of this original study as a Research assistant. I was able to engage in various stages of the research project pipeline, including collecting data with children at Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum and The Leonardo, collaborating with Dr. Moore and the lab’s graduate student, Dara Zwemer, to develop materials, recruit participants, assist in project management, and contribute to the data analysis phase.

While working at various data collection sites off the University of Utah campus, including the Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum and The Leonardo Museum, I managed and monitored the exhibits, recruited participants, and collected data. Recruiting young participants required a lot of training and patience. The use of virtual reality not only added ecological validity to the study, but it also became one of the main factors attracting participants. Having this experience significantly expanded my skills in both technological use and experimental research designs.

One important thing that I learned from collecting data is the importance of ethical and confidential practices when conducting research. Being a research assistant involves being responsible and upholding not only your research training but also considering all of these practices to create valid and useful real-world research.

In general, working on this project deepened my understanding of the cognitive processes that underlie memory and are key to understanding and improving eyewitness identification processes. This project also strengthened my practical research skills. From learning how to use Virtual Reality to handling real-world data and conducting my own secondary research investigation, each step pushed me beyond what I could have learned in the classroom, making me think outside the box and more like a researcher. This experience changed my undergraduate studies.

Bibliography

Brewer, N., & Day, K. (2005). The confidence-accuracy and decision latency-accuracy relationships in children’s eyewitness identification. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 12(1), 119–128. https://doi.org/10.1375/pplt.2005.12.1.119

Dunlevy, J. R., & Cherryman, J. (2012). Target-Absent Eyewitness Identification Line-Ups: Why Do Children Like to Choose. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 20(2), 284–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2012.671584

Dunning, D., & Perretta, S. (2002). Automaticity and eyewitness accuracy: A 10- to 12-second rule for distinguishing accurate from inaccurate positive identifications. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 951–962. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.5.951

Moore, K.N., Zwemer, D.U., Lampinen, J. M., Pennecamp, P., Nyman, T.J., Santilla, P., Korkman, J., & Antfolk, J. [Submitted for publication] Child eyewitnesses’ expressions of certainty are not necessarily accurate.

Nyman, T. J., Lampinen, J. M., Antfolk, J., Korkman, J., & Santtila, P. (2019). The distance threshold of reliable eyewitness identification. Law and Human Behavior, 43(6), 527-541. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000342

Pozzulo, J.D., & Lindsay, R.C. L. (1998). Identification accuracy of children versus adults: a meta-analysis. Law and Human Behavior, 22(5), 549–570. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025739514042

Quigley-McBride, A., & Wells, G. L. (2023). Eyewitness confidence and decision time reflect identification accuracy in actual police lineups. Law and Human Behavior, 47(2), 333-347. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000518

Weber, N., Brewer, N., Wells, G. L., Semmler, C., & Keast, A. (2004). Eyewitness identification accuracy and response latency: The unruly 10-12-second rule. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 10(3), 139-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.10.3.139

Wixted, J. T., & Wells, G. L. (2017). The relationship between eyewitness confidence and identification accuracy: A new synthesis. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 18(1), 10-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1529100616686966