Daily Mail
May 17, 2018
Eyewitness accounts may be far more reliable when conducted by a virtual police officer, rather than the real thing.
Witnesses of a mock car theft provided as much as 60 percent more information when interviewed in an avatar-to-avatar context compared to face-to-face interviews.
Giving testimony to the police can be stressful and intimidating. Previous studies have shown that multiple factors – including an unfamiliar setting, the police officer, or the desire to ‘perform well’ – can decrease the accuracy of a witness’ testimony.
‘Witnesses can become distracted from the task of remembering during an interview because they are attending to the social behavior of the interviewer, such as facial expressions. Such behaviors can negatively affect witness memory performance,’ said Professor Coral Dando of the University of Westminster in London.
‘My research explores interviewing in non-traditional contexts to support complex cognition such as long-term memory – reducing the task demands by managing the environment to allow people to concentrate on one task at a time.’
This article was posted: Thursday, May 17, 2018 at 6:40 am
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