Assessing Verbal Eyewitness Confidence Statements Using Natural Language Processing.

After an eyewitness completes a lineup, officers are advised to ask witnesses how confident they are in their identification. Although researchers in the lab typically study eyewitness confidence numerically, confidence in the field is primarily gathered verbally. In the current study, we used a natural language-processing approach to develop an automated model to classify verbal eyewitness confidence statements.

What happens after debriefing? The effectiveness and benefits of postexperimental debriefing.

After participating in an experiment, people are routinely debriefed. How effective is debriefing when the experiments involve deception, as occurs in studies of misinformation and memory? We conducted two studies addressing this question. In Study 1, participants (N = 373) watched a video, were exposed to misinformation or not, and completed a memory test.

Pandemics and infodemics: Research on the effects of misinformation on memory.

On social media and in everyday life, people are often exposed to misinformation. Decades of research have shown that exposure to misinformation can have significant impacts on people's thoughts, actions, and memories. During global pandemics like COVID-19, people are likely exposed to heightened quantities of misinformation as they search for and are exposed to copious amounts of information about the disease and its effects.

Eyewitness confidence malleability: Misinformation as post-identification feedback.

Feedback from lineup administrators about identification accuracy significantly impacts witness confidence. In the current studies, we investigated the effect of post-identification feedback given 1-week after an initial, pristine lineup. We tested 2 kinds of feedback: typical feedback (i.