Eyewitness Reliability in Motor Vehicle Crashes: A Primer for Practitioners, First Edition PDF eBook
- Author: Patrick J. Robins
- PDF eBook
A necessity for anyone involved with eyewitness reports.
Eyewitnesses, especially in testimony, can be a mess. Two witnesses can contradict one another over the same accident scene. Some acquire post-event misinformation. And human memory, always unreliable, plays a crucial role. Now you can be prepared with this book, exploring all the fallible aspects of eyewitness testimony. You will learn how a jury evaluates eyewitness testimony on the basis of witness confidence and personality. This book teaches you to counteract this by knowing what questions to ask your witnesses to get the most accurate information, where to undermine the eyewitness testimony against you, and how to avoid the pitfalls of eyewitness evidence. Dr. Robins cites case studies, research, and seminar demonstrations that are both interesting and educational. By learning from one of the world's experts, you will make eyewitness testimony an asset to your case.
Topics Include:
- Use of physical evidence
- Limitations of physical evidence
- Use of human evidence
- Limitations of human evidence
- Evidence and truth
- Vision
- Sensation
- Perception
- Central viewing
- Peripheral viewing
- Contrast
- Attention
- Perception of distance and speed
- Processing speed and time
- Perception of time
- Perception and knowledge
- Perception and expectation
- Perception and truth
- Sensory memory
- Short-Term memory
- Long-Term memory
- Memory distortion
- Memory and emotion
- Sources of misinformation
- Witness overconfidence
- Forgetting in sensory short-term and long-term memory
- Cue-Dependent forgetting
- State-Dependent forgetting
- Amnesia
- The scientific model
- Internal and external validity
- The role of chance
- Statistical significance versus usefulness
- Human factors issues
- Practical considerations
