Browsing by Author "Bruer, Kaila"

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Open Access
Adults’ Perceptions of Child Eyewitness Credibility: Multiple Independent Lineups
(2024-11-06) Engel, Katherine; Carr, Shaelyn; Bruer, Kaila
Open Access
Examining the effects of legal articulation in memory accuracy
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2022-12) Trott, Kelsey Colin; Bruer, Kaila; MacLennan, Richard; Phenix, Tom; Gacek, James
The present research investigated the effects of legal articulation on police cadet memory performance in applied contexts. Legal articulation is a memory retrieval framework used by police officers to recall their actions for legal procedures and courtroom testimony. This research compared the level of detail (quantity) and accuracy (quality) of police cadet’s memories for a low-stress crime event under two different memory retrieval frameworks: legal articulation and serial recall. The findings can be used to guide police training programs to use procedures that support reliable memory recalls. No significant differences were found after the initial retrieval; however, significant differences were found in both quantity and quality of recall after a one-day delay. When serial recall was used initially to recall the event, the final retrieval was significantly more detailed and accurate than participants that initially recalled the event using legal articulation. These findings can be used to assist police agencies in their formal applied training programs for police officers.
Open Access
Metamemory and Lineup Selection: Can Children’s Metacognitive Beliefs Influence Lineup Selection?
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2021-05) Adams, Alyssa Susan; Oriet, Christopher; Price, Heather; Bruer, Kaila; Phenix, Tom; Pica, Emily
Child eyewitnesses pose a continuous challenge for the criminal justice system. Researchers have made repeated attempts to combat children’s problematic over-choosing from a photographic lineup (e.g., Pozzulo & Lindsay, 1999), but difficulties remain. Although there have been multiple hypotheses put forth that attempt to explain why children struggle with correctly rejecting target-absent lineups (i.e., saying the perpetrator is not there when s/he is not), none have fully explained the reason for children’s error patterns (Dunlevy & Cherryman, 2013; Pozzulo & Lindsay, 1997). One possibility is that children overestimate the accuracy of their own memory. Children often exhibit similar levels of metacognitive abilities as adults; however, children have been repeatedly shown to be overconfident in their lineup decisions (Keast et al., 2007). Assuming appropriate metacognitive function, this overconfidence may be a result of children’s failure to consider factors that could disconfirm their lineup decision, and they may need to be explicitly informed of the complexity of an eyewitness identification. Providing children with such a warning after a lineup identification has been previously shown to result in only a slight reduction in overconfidence (Keast et al., 2007). In the present study, child participants were placed into one of three conditions (control, metacognition, and metacognition + warning) to determine if reflection on metamemory beliefs in combination with a warning on memory fallibility would influence their photographic lineup choosing behaviour. Although there was some indication that those who believed they were generally good at the task chose with a higher frequency, there was no indication that this belief was related to the accuracy of those choices. Those who were choosers were significantly more inaccurate than the non-chooser’s, and overall the instruction manipulations were unsuccessful. More work needs to be done to determine if children’s prospective beliefs on memory can subsequently influence their performance during recognition memory tasks.
Open Access
Relative state and decision making under risk
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2022-06) Fogg, Cody Joseph; Mishra, Sandeep; Phenix, Tom; Bruer, Kaila; Pennycook, Gordon; Childs, Jason
The recently developed (and mathematically formalized) relative state model of risk-taking suggests that individuals are motivated by two non-independent pathways to risk-taking: a need-based pathway, wherein risk-taking is the preferable course of action because a non-risky decision fails to meet an individual’s needs; and an ability-based pathway, wherein risk-taking is the preferable course of action because individuals are in such a good state that taking risks offers a higher expected value than non-risky alternatives. I tested the predictive value of the relative state model using a modified version of the Ecological Decision Task (ECO Task; Mishra & Lalumière, 2010), which asked participants to “forage” apples from trees which differ in the outcome variance associated with the outcomes, such that the yellow tree provides 10 or 11 apples each time, whereas the blue tree provides between four and 17 apples. Participants chose from the two trees in hopes of meeting some need-threshold that ranged from needing four apples to needing 31 apples. I separated participants into three conditions: a poor-state condition where participants needed many apples to meet their need; a moderate-state condition where participants needed a moderate number of apples to meet their need; and a good-state condition where participants needed a small number of apples to meet their need. I predicted that those in the poor-state and good-state conditions would choose the riskier (blue) tree more often than those in the moderate-state condition. I tested the results using a Kruskal-Wallis test (N = 293) and found support for the need-based (Obs. Diff. = 74.48, Crit. Diff. = 29.20), but not ability-based (Obs. Diff. = 5.41, Crit. Diff. = 29.06) pathway. Exploratory analyses elucidated many causal, decision-level variables, while also highlighting limitations with the study of risk-taking. I discuss implications for the relative state model, future research using the experimental task from the current study, and risk-taking research in the discussion.