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Deborah Davis
Department of Psychology
University of Nevada
Mail Stop 296
Reno, NV 89557 USA
Office phone: (775) 784-1162
Office fax: (775) 784-1126
Email: debdavis@unr.nevada.edu
Home page: http://www.sierratrialandopinion.com/papers
Change Detection Research Interests
My lab is investigating the role of change blindness in mistaken eye-witness identifications of innocent bystanders to crime. There have been a number of annecdotal reports of misidentifications of this nature (typically referred to as "unconscious transference", or as a specific form for source monitoring failure), as well as some laboratory demonstrations. Our subjects see films of innocent shoppers in a supermarket, followed by a crime of shoplifting. We use analogs of typical attentional manipulations in change blindness research to mask the change from the innocent bystander to criminal (such as focusing attention on memorizing products in the shopping isles). The question of interest is whether conditions that tend to induce change blindness in other research paradigms increase the rate of misidentification of innocent bystanders as the criminal. If the misidentifications are specifically related to change blindness, rather than simple failure of source monitoring, we should also find that innocents that are more physically distant, or observed in a less continuous motion or activity, should less often be misidentified as the criminal. For example, a person seen walking down the isle who is replaced by another who shoplifts in that isle should be misidentified more frequently as the culprit than one seen in a different isle or location in the store. Our initial results have revealed the following: (1) more than half of subjects failed to notice the change between a person who walks down the isle and passes behind a stack of products, and a second person who emerges from behind the stack and shoplifts, (2) distraction increased the number who failed to notice the change, (3) among those who failed to notice the change, more misidentified the "continuous innocent" (the one who passed behind the box and could be mistaken as the same person as the shoplifter) than the "discontinuous" innocent who was shown immediately after the shoplifting in a different isle. Each innocent and the shoplifter were shown for equal amounts of time. Thus, observers should find them equally familiar. Apparently because the illusion of continuous action causes observers to mistake the continuous innocent and the shoplifter to be the same person, they are later more likely to misidentify her than the discontinuous innocent seen in another isle and a separate behavior sequence. We are now following up with investigations of circumstances that will and will not tend to produce the illusion of one person (or change blindness), including time delays between when the innocent disappears and the perpetrator reappears, and other features of the scene that imply continuity versus discontinuity in identity.
Other Research Interests
Witness memory, Mechanisms of Memory Distortion, Evidentiary Issues in Court, Romantic Relationship Behavior Across the Lifespan, Adult Attachment Style
Change Detection Publications
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