Published in\u00a0PLOS ONE<\/em>, the research found that eyewitnesses to a crime who sleep before being given a lineup are much less likely to pick an innocent person out of a lineup — at least when the perpetrator is not in the lineup<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Some 70 percent of wrongful convictions in the United States are related to false eyewitness accounts. This study is the first scientific investigation into how sleep affects eyewitness memory of a crime, said lead author Michelle Stepan, a doctoral student in psychology.<\/p>\n “It’s concerning that more people aren’t making the correct decision during lineups; this suggests our memories are not super accurate and that’s a problem when you’re dealing with the consequences of the criminal justice system,” Stepan said. “Putting someone in jail is a big decision based on somebody’s memory of a crime.”<\/p>\n Stepan and Kimberly Fenn, associate professor of psychology and director of MSU’s Sleep and Learning Lab, conducted an experiment in which about 200 participants watched a video of a crime (a man planting a bomb on a rooftop) and then, 12 hours later, viewed one of two computer lineups of six similar-looking people. One lineup included the perpetrator; the other lineup did not.<\/p>\n Some participants watched the crime video in the morning and viewed a lineup that night, with no sleep in between. Others watched the crime video at night and viewed a lineup the next morning, after sleeping.<\/p>\n When the perpetrator was not in the lineup, participants who had slept identified an innocent person 42 percent of the time — compared to 66 percent for participants who had not slept.<\/p>\n “This is the most interesting finding of the study — that individuals are less likely to choose an innocent suspect after a period of sleep when the perpetrator is absent from the lineup<\/strong>,” Fenn said. This is relevant, she added, because false convictions too often stem from an incorrect eyewitness identification of a suspect who did not commit the crime.<\/p>\n When the perpetrator was in the lineup, there was essentially no difference between the sleep and no-sleep groups’ ability to choose the guilty man<\/strong>. Both groups correctly identified the perpetrator about 50 percent of the time.<\/p>\n “In other words,” Fenn said, “sleep may not help you get the right guy, but it may help you keep an innocent individual out of jail<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n The results could reflect both changes in memory strength and decision-making strategies after sleep<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The researchers believe participants who slept were more likely to use an “absolute strategy<\/strong>,” in which they compare each person in the lineup to their memory of the suspect, while participants who didn’t sleep were more likely to use a “relative strategy<\/strong>,” in which they compare the people in the lineup to each other to determine who most resembles the perpetrator relative to the others.<\/p>\n Using a relative strategy is believed to increase false identifications relative to an absolute strategy in perpetrator-absent lineups, Stepan said.<\/p>\n “These findings tell us that sleep likely impacts memory processes but that it might also impact how people search through a lineup<\/strong>, and those search strategies might be a critical factor when the perpetrator is not in the lineup,” she said.<\/p>\n Fenn noted that the key findings of the study have since been replicated.<\/p>\n The MSU team is conducting research that further explores how sleep may directly or indirectly affect eyewitness memory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the\u00a0Michigan State University press release: Sleep may influence an eyewitness’s ability to correctly pick a guilty person out of a police lineup, indicates a study by Michigan State University… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[526,4,60,43],"tags":[20,18,289,508,443,363,12,362],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23442"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23558,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23442\/revisions\/23558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/eyesight_vision.jpg\")
Sleep may influence an eyewitness’s ability to correctly pick a guilty person out of a police lineup<\/strong>, indicates a study by Michigan State University researchers.<\/p>\n