Hypnosis has gained substantial support in the psychological community, as well as related health professions. The intense renewal of interest in hypnosis has also affected our legal-judicial system. Many police investigators trained in hypnosis operate from an exactcopy memory theory. They claim eyewitness eyewitness retrieve veridically stored memory traces from long-term memory, if questioned under hypnosis. Conversely, other researchers ascribe to a reconstructive memory theory. They believe hypnosis increases the likelihood of eliciting erroneous memories from eyewitnesses, especially under leading questioning. The purpose of the present investigation was to test the effects of hypnotic induction and anxiety on the accuracy of subjects' memory for eyewitnessed events when questioned with leading, non-leading, and embedded misinformation questions.

Past research has investigated the cross-race effect in the context of eyewitnesses and jury decision-making. The main goal of my thesis was to gain further insight into participants’ knowledge of the cross-race effect and how this impacted participants’ discrimination of same- and cross-race identifications. One hundred fifty-nine undergraduate students from UOIT viewed a series of showup identification videos. I found that participants were better able to discriminate accurate from inaccurate same-race identifications than cross-race identifications. However, participants believed White witnesses more and found them more credible than South Asian witnesses. Further research should investigate other conditions that influence people’s abilities to discriminate accurate from inaccurate eyewitness identifications. / UOIT

This study explored the content of courtroom conversations about children's prior discussions regarding sexual abuse. Sixty felony child abuse trial transcripts including child testimony and reviewing court opinions were collected from the Court of Appeal and from court reporters. Information was obtained from under Section 288 of the California Penal code (sexual abuse of a child under 14 years of age) filed in Los Angeles County from 1997 to 2001. For this study, transcript testimony was transcribed, extracted for the necessary information, coded, assessed for reliability, and analyzed. The findings indicate that conversations about children's prior disclosure conversations, non-disclosure conversations, and conversations with perpetrators are present in nearly all cases of alleged child sexual abuse, although they only represent about 8% of questions asked of children. These courtroom conversations appear to mimic effects found throughout other child testimony research: children are often limited in their responsiveness unless open ended questions are asked and they rarely provide detailed content unless prompted to do so. The findings revealed that overt accusations, references to children's motives for telling or not telling, and conversations with the perpetrator about abuse were infrequently discussed by attorneys when interviewing child witnesses about their alleged sexual abuse during trial testimony. This was surprising as these topics are often discussed in the empirical literature as important factors to consider when assessing children's credibility. In the present study, children were often asked about what they disclosed generally, what was said during abusive acts, and what was (or was not) disclosed during specific prior conversations. Further, our results reflect that children's ultimate credibility assessment, as assessed by the outcome of the trial, related to the presence of non-disclosure questions and not the presence of disclosure questions or conversations between the perpetrator and child; cases without non-disclosure questions consistently resulted in a conviction. This study provided a first step in assessing the content of courtroom conversations about children's prior discussions about sexual abuse. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.

The Self-Administered Interview© (SAI©) is an eyewitness interviewing tool designed to help protect eyewitness memory and elicit a comprehensive initial statement (Gabbert, Hope, & Fisher, 2009). Early research shows promising results in general adult samples. Whether the SAI© is an effective tool for older adult witnesses has not yet been fully addressed. Older adults will become increasingly important as a witness population in the future, yet perform worse compared to young adults. Some attempts have been made to aid older adult witnesses, but an easy-to-apply and effective method is yet to be introduced. This dissertation presents an overview of current knowledge on eyewitnesses and provides a theoretical basis for the empirical chapters. It further presents results of a systematic review and several meta-analyses on the effectiveness of the SAI© as a means to enhance eyewitness testimony. The meta-analyses cover 38 experimental comparisons from 22 empirical studies representing 1712 interviewees. Results indicate a strong benefit of the SAI both immediately after the witnessed crime (d = 1.20) and in a delayed recall (d = 0.92 compared to no initial recall) after one to three weeks. The third large chapter of this dissertation presents the results of an experiment that investigated the effectiveness of the SAI© for older witnesses’ testimony, suggestibility and lineup performance. 144 participants, half of which were 60 years or older and half aged 18-30 years, took part in two sessions. In the first session, they were shown a film of a staged crime and either filled in the SAI©, gave a written free recall or no initial recall. In the second session after one week they were then asked to give a free recall of what they remembered, answer questions including suggestive questions, and also to identify the perpetrator from the film from a 6-person simultaneous photo lineup. Results confirm the classic SAI© effect for young adults, show a small beneficial effect for older adults and also indicate a beneficial effect for lineup performance for the first time.