1994 — 1997 |
Thompson, William |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Doctoral Dissertation Research: He Said, She Said: Can Jurors Accurately Evaluate Hearsay Evidence? @ University of California-Irvine
9409681 THOMPSON This research is a series of experiments examining the ability of people to evaluate the accuracy of hearsay evidence about out-of- court statements by children. The project will first examine factors that affect the accuracy of testimony by an adult witness regarding a child's statements, focusing particularly on the effects of witness preconceptions and on the ability of the witness to take into account the effects of suggestive techniques used in interviewing children. Sesondly, the study will test the ability of people to evaluate the testimony of the adult hearsay witnesses, focusing on whether they take into account factors known to influence the reliability of hearsay witnesses. These studies cast light on important theoretical issues concerning the accuracy of cascaded inference in jurisprudence. They will also have considerable practical value by illuminating the cognitive factors that underly the ability of people to evaluate the accuracy of hearsay evidence. ***
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0.915 |
2006 — 2009 |
Thompson, William |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Jurors' Evaluations of Forensic Science @ University of California-Irvine
Abstract SES 0617672
Forensic science is playing an increasingly important role in the justice system but it poses special challenges for lay jurors. To evaluate forensic evidence, jurors often must consider mathematical or statistical data, such as random match probabilities, false positive rates, and likelihood ratios. In order to learn more about jurors' ability to understand and use such data, a series of four jury-simulation experiments will be conducted at a county courthouse. As they are released from jury duty, jurors will be invited to remain in the jury assembly room to read and evaluate summaries of evidence in hypothetical cases. The nature of the forensic evidence, and the way it is presented, will be varied experimentally in order to test a series of hypotheses about jurors' use (and possible misuse) of forensic statistics. The goal of the research is to identify potential misunderstandings and inferential errors and find ways to correct them as well as learning which methods of presentation best promote clear understanding.
The proposed studies are more sophisticated than previous research in this area on several dimensions. First, they address realistic and important issues that frequently arise when forensic evidence is presented to juries. Second, they employ more sophisticated normative models than those used in previous studies as standards of comparison against which jurors' actual judgments can be evaluated. Third, they examine the judgments of a representative sample of citizens from an actual jury pool (rather than undergraduates). Finally, although these studies are primarily designed to answer practical questions of importance to the legal system, they are also informed by (and designed to address) broader theoretical issues in the psychology of human judgment and decision-making. They will extend and test the limits of existing theories of probabilistic judgment and, in particular, will explore people's susceptibility to several forms of fallacious reasoning when dealing with quantitative data.
Broader Impacts: In 1996, the National Research Council recommended that behavioral research be carried out "to identify any conditions that might cause a trier-of-fact to misinterpret evidence on DNA profiling and to assess how well various ways of presenting expert testimony on DNA can reduce any such misunderstandings" (NRC, 1996, Recommendation 6.1). Since that time, relatively few such behavioral studies have been published and the potential for misunderstanding DNA evidence, and other types of forensic evidence, remains an important concern. The studies proposed here take an important step toward addressing that concern. They examine a series of novel questions, never before addressed, that must be answered if we wish to know how (and how well) jurors understand forensic evidence. These studies will help identify circumstances in which jurors are likely to misinterpret forensic evidence, giving it more (or less) weight than it deserves. This knowledge will be helpful to courts in evaluating the admissibility of contested forensic evidence. It will also provide much needed guidance on presenting forensic evidence in a manner that is effective and fair. The broad theoretical framework of the research makes it relevant to a wide range of evidence in the forensic identification sciences.
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0.915 |