To date, research on the effect of depressive symptomatology on victim-witness identification is scarce even though depressive symptomatology is highly prevalent in the victim-witness experience. Furthermore, being a victim-witness often instigates the use of counselling services, which could cause a shift in affect, and applying mood dependent memory theories, any change in affect should be detrimental to eyewitness accuracy. Still, individuals suffering from subclinical depression, or dysphoria, have exhibited heightened perceptual skills, and depressed affect exhibits remarkable stability over time. Therefore, I theorized that: (1) dysphoric people’s heightened sensitivity and motivation towards accurate understanding may result in more accurate eyewitness identifications, and (2) individuals who express stable levels of dysphoria should have greater eyewitness identification accuracy than should people with stable levels of nondysphoria, with stable levels of severe depressive symptomatology, or with unstable depressive symptomatology. In Study One, 132 students were randomly assigned to one of three autobiographical mood inductions: a positive, negative, or neutral/control. Following this manipulation, participants completed 12 experimental trials each consisting of a target exposure, a 30-second distraction task, and lastly, a six-person simultaneous line-up. Higher levels of dysphoria were associated with greater overall identification accuracy and that temporary mood conferred an advantage only when participants recalled highly sad memories. In Study Two, 173 participants were exposed to 12 target faces at a first session and returned two-to-four weeks later to identify these faces from 12 six-person simultaneous line-ups. Individuals who exhibited stable levels of dysphoria from eyewitness event to the line-up task performed significantly better on the simultaneous line-ups than all of the other groups. Among those exhibiting unstable dysphoria, people whose depressive symptomatology improved were almost as accurate as those who had stable dysphoria. These results support the need for victim-witnesses to receive immediate help to stabilize or improve depressive symptomatology not just for their mental well-being but also to preserve eyewitness accuracy. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-23 13:11:50.153

Eyewitnesses are important for the outcome of many criminal cases. Sometimes other evidence is lacking and the testimony then becomes decisive, but it is difficult to know how reliable the eyewitness’ memories are. This study aimed to investigate speech rate as an indicator of memory accuracy. The hypothesis was that correct memories would be presented with a faster speech rate than incorrect memories. The participants (n = 10) were students who were part of a previous study by Lindholm et al. (2018). The students watched a film sequence and were interviewed afterwards about what they had seen. Their answers were recorded and the voice was analyzed digitally. A t-test for dependent samples showed that correct statements had significantly faster speech rate than incorrect ones. The results support the hypothesis and are in line with previous research on making asserted statements faster. Should future research show similar results, the method of digital voice analysis could be used as a complement in the judiciary to evaluate testimony. Understanding what acoustic indicators are on correct or incorrect memories could be helpful in assessing testimonies for judges, jurors, legal representatives and the police force. / Ögonvittnen är viktiga för utgången i många brottmål. Ibland saknas övrig bevisning och vittnesmålet blir då avgörande men det är svårt att veta hur pålitliga ögonvittnens minnen är. Denna studie syftade till att undersöka talhastighet som en indikator på korrekthet i minnen genom användning av digital röstanalys. Hypotesen var att talhastigheten vid korrekta minnen skulle vara snabbare än vid inkorrekta. Deltagarna (n = 10) var studenter som ingick i en tidigare experimentell studie av Lindholm et al. (2018). Studenterna fick se en film och intervjuades efteråt om vad de sett. Deras svar spelades in och rösten analyserades digitalt. Ett t-test för beroende mätningar visade att talhastigheten vid korrekta påståenden var signifikant snabbare än vid inkorrekta. Resultatet stödjer hypotesen samt ligger i linje med tidigare forskning kring att säkra påståenden sker snabbare. Skulle framtida forskning visa på liknande resultat skulle metoden med digital röstanalys kunna användas som ett komplement inom rättsväsendet som stöd vid vittnesmål. Förståelse för vilka akustiska indikatorer som finns på korrekta eller inkorrekta minnen skulle kunna vara hjälpsamma i vittnesförhör, både hos domare, nämndemän, juridiska ombud och hos polisen.