Marijuana Impairs the Accuracy of Eyewitness Memory and the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship Too.

Authors: Kathy Pezdek, Erica Abed, & Daniel Reisberg

US law enforcement officers have estimated that about 25% of witnesses to crimes are under the influence of marijuana. Does marijuana impair the reliability of eyewitness identification and is this something that marijuana users are aware of? In our study, marijuana users were randomly assigned to a marijuana or control condition and participated in a face recognition memory test. We found that people under the influence of marijuana were significantly less accurate eyewitnesses. But further, those in the marijuana condition were not aware that marijuana impaired their memory; even when they provided high confidence judgments, they were less accurate than control subjects. This is critical because legal cases are more likely to be prosecuted if they involve highly confident eyewitnesses. We document for the first time what law enforcement may already suspect: stoned eyewitnesses do not make good eyewitnesses.

The Many Faces of Forgetting: Toward a Constructive View of Forgetting in Everyday Life.

Authors: Jonathan Fawcett & Justin Hulbert

Forgetting is often considered a fundamental cognitive failure, reflecting the undesirable inability to retrieve a sought-after experience or fact. In this article, we highlight instead how forgetfulness serves many purposes. Drawing from cognitive, neuroscientific, and applied research, we contextualize our findings in terms of their contributions along three important (if not entirely independent) roles supported by forgetting, namely (a) the maintenance of a positive and coherent self-image, (b) the facilitation of efficient cognitive function, and (c) the development of a creative and flexible worldview. Together, these roles depict an expanded understanding of how forgetting provides memory with many of its cardinal virtues.

Fair Forensic-Object Lineups Are Superior to Forensic-Object Showups

Authors: Andrew Smith, Simona Mackovichova, Shaela Jalava, & Joanna Pozzulo

When presenting a suspect to a witness for an identification attempt, fair lineups are superior to one-person showups. Relative to showups, fair lineups decrease innocent-suspect identifications to a greater extent than culprit identifications. We examined whether the lineup advantage extends from facial identification to forensic-object identification. Participants watched a short video of a car theft and then completed two target-present or target-absent showups or lineups. Participants first attempted to identify the culprit from the video and then attempted to identify the vehicle from the video. For both the facial and forensic-object identification procedures, we found evidence that lineups were superior to showups. In addition, confidence was helpful at discriminating between accurate and inaccurate suspect identifications for forensic-object lineups, but not for forensic-object showups.

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