Fiona Gabbert

Goldsmiths, University of London · Department of Psychology

Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) represents a form of technology-facilitated sexual abuse that encompasses the taking, creating, and/or sharing (including threats to share) of nude or sexual images without consent. Unlike physical sexual violence contexts, little is known regarding if and how bystanders intervene in IBSA contexts. The current prelim...

The covert use of civilian informants leaves law enforcement agencies open to accusations of unethical conduct. The use of a structured interview protocol is a recognised method of promoting ethical interactions between police and public citizens, however, there is no known interview model specifically designed to meet informant handler objectives....

This article presents a systematic review of the available literature on ‘what works’ in cold case investigations, with a specific focus on psychological evidence-based research. Long-term unsolved and cold cases present their own unique set of challenges, such as lack of hard evidence, recall accuracy, and witness credibility. Therefore, this revi...

The use of covert human intelligence sources for the protection of national security is an important but under-researched area. In light of increased globalisation, and technological developments, examining covert intelligence gathering online may have operational relevance. This study examined the use of similarities in self-disclosure to develop...

Detecting informant deception is a key concern for law enforcement officers, with implications for resource-management, operational decision-making and protecting officers from risk of harm. However, the situational dilemma of a police informant, otherwise known as a Covert Human Intelligence Source (CHIS), is unique. Informants are tasked to obtai...

The pursuit of justice increasingly relies on productive interactions between witnesses and investigators from diverse cultural backgrounds during investigative interviews. To date, the role of cultural context has largely been ignored by researchers in the field of investigative interviewing, despite repeated requests from practitioners and policy...

Objectives The Self-Administered Interview (SAI©) is an investigative tool designed to facilitate the reporting of comprehensive initial statements by witnesses. Given increasing use of technology to communicate, many witnesses may prefer to provide investigators with accounts of what they have seen using online or mobile reporting platforms. Resea...

Law enforcement agencies in the UK are embracing evidence-based policing and recognise the importance of human source intelligence (HUMINT) in the decision-making process. A review of the literature identified six categories likely to impact the handling of a covert human intelligence source (CHIS) or an informant: (a) handler personality traits; (...

Reports about repeated experiences tend to include more schematic information than information about specific instances. However, investigators in both forensic and intelligence settings typically seek specific over general information. We tested a multi-method interviewing format (MMIF) to facilitate recall and particularisation of repeated events...

A growing body of research illustrates consensus between researchers and practitioners that developing rapport facilitates cooperation and disclosure in a range of professional information gathering contexts. In such contexts, rapport behaviors are often intentionally used in an attempt to facilitate a positive interaction with another adult, which...

The Self‐Administered Interview (SAI©) is designed to elicit detailed witness reports in the aftermath of incidents. In two sets of meta‐analyses, we compared the number of correct details reported, the number of incorrect details reported, and the accuracy of reports provided by witnesses in initial reports (SAI© vs. other reporting formats) and i...

A growing body of research illustrates consensus between researchers and practitioners that developing rapport facilitates cooperation and disclosure in a range of professional information gathering contexts. In such contexts, rapport behaviors are often intentionally used in an attempt to facilitate a positive interaction with another adult, which...

The Self-Administered Interview (SAI©) is designed to elicit detailed witness reportsin the aftermath of incidents. In two sets of meta-analyses, we compared the number of correct details reported, the number of incorrect details reported, and the accuracy of reports provided by witnesses in initial reports (SAI© vs. other reporting formats) and in...

The investigative interviewing of a vulnerable suspect is a complex and difficult task. Current best practice advocates for the use of open questions in order to elicit a free recall. However, those with mental health conditions have limited cognitive abilities that relate to free recall and episodic memory, and there is emerging evidence that sugg...

Environmental support at retrieval improves episodic performance, yet there exists very few empirically evaluated techniques for supporting older witnesses/victims’ remembering (>65 years). We investigated two techniques for use in a criminal justice context – the Self-Administered Interview and Sketch Reinstatement of Context. Older adults (N = 13...

In information gathering interviews, follow‐up questions are asked to clarify and extend initial witness accounts. Across two experiments, we examined the efficacy of open‐ended questions following an account about a multi‐perpetrator event. In Experiment 1, 50 mock‐witnesses used the timeline technique or a free recall format to provide an initial...

Denault, V., Plusquellec, P., Jupe, L. M., St-Yves, M., Dunbar, N. E., Hartwig, M., … van Koppen, P. J. (2020). L’analyse de la communication non verbale: Les dangers de la pseudoscience en contextes de sécurité et de justice [The analysis of nonverbal communication: The dangers of pseudoscience in security and justice contexts]. Revue internationa...

Purpose The success of missing person investigations often centres on the quality of information obtained in the early stages. Reliable information can not only inform the search but might also become vital evidence if the case broadens into a criminal investigation relating to a sexual offence, abduction, or even murder. In addition to eliciting h...

For security and justice professionals (e.g., police officers, lawyers, judges), the thousands of peer-reviewed articles on nonverbal communication represent important sources of knowledge. However, despite the scope of the scientific work carried out on this subject, professionals can turn to programs, methods, and approaches that fail to reflect...

Para los profesionales de la seguridad y la justicia (policías, abogados, jueces), los miles de artículos revisados por pares sobre comunicación no verbal representan fuentes importantes de conocimiento. Sin embargo, a pesar del alcance del trabajo científico realizado sobre este tema, los profesionales pueden recurrir a programas, métodos y enfoqu...

Mentally disordered individuals are increasingly coming into contact with the police. The current study explored investigative interview practice with mentally disordered suspects to examine how they respond and the impact this has on the level of information obtained. Transcripts of interviews conducted with vulnerable and nonvulnerable suspects (...

Forensic interviewing forms an integral part of a police/law enforcement officer’s main duties and responsibilities. However, not every interviewer possesses suitable interview skills to be able to complete this effectively and despite the introduction of the PEACE model of interviewing, with the last ‘E’ focusing specifically on ‘Evaluation’, this...

Given the often crucial role of witness evidence in Occupational Health and Safety investigation, statements should be obtained as soon as possible after an incident using best practice methods. The present research systematically tested the efficacy of a novel Self‐Administered Witness Interview Tool (SAW‐IT); an adapted version of the Self‐Admini...

The verbal content of interactions (what was said and who said what) can be important as evidence and intelligence information. Across 3 empirical studies, we examined memory for details of an overheard (Experiment 1) or witnessed (Experiments 2 and 3) conversation using a timeline technique adapted for the reporting of conversations between multip...

Background In almost all countries worldwide, the first point of contact with the criminal justice system is with the police. A large proportion of these individuals may have vulnerabilities, such as mental health difficulties. Given the complexities associated with vulnerable suspects, such interviews may be compromised, which could lead to a misc...

We experimentally examined the effects of alcohol consumption and exposure to misleading post event information on memory for a hypothetical interactive rape scenario. We used a 2 beverage (alcohol versus tonic water) x 2 expectancy (told alcohol versus told tonic) factorial design. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to conditions. They c...

In many applied contexts where accurate and reliable information informs operational decision-making, emergency response resource allocation, efficient investigation, judicial process, and, ultimately, the delivery of justice, the costs of unfettered conversational remembering can be high. To date, research has demonstrated that conversations betwe...

Eyewitnesses to crimes sometimes report inaccurate fine-grain details but fail to report accessible and potentially accurate coarse-grain details. We asked college students and community members (aged 17 to 62 years) who viewed a video of a simulated crime to answer interviewers’ questions at coarse- and fine-grained levels of detail and measured t...

Obtaining detailed accounts from individuals who have witnessed complex events under challenging encoding conditions presents a difficulty for investigators. In the present research, participants (N = 132) reported their recall of an event witnessed under full or divided attention using a timeline reporting format. Extending the timeline technique...

This experiment was designed to examine the effect of misinformation imparted through co-witness discussions on memory reports and line-up decisions obtained after varied retention intervals. Two-hundred and eighty-nine participants viewed a simulated car-jacking and then heard co-witnesses describe their memory for the event. Confederate accounts...

We draw upon the Associative Network model of memory, as well as the principles of encoding-retrieval specificity, and cue distinctiveness, to argue that self-generated cue mnemonics offer an intuitive means of facilitating reliable recall of personally experienced events. The use of a self-generated cue mnemonic allows for the spreading activation...

Due to the constructive nature of memory, recollections for events are easily contaminated or distorted by information encountered after the event took place. People can therefore mistakenly report information that has been suggested to them, but that they have not in reality experienced. In light of this well-documented memory fallibility, the cur...

Despite mentally disordered suspects being over-represented within the criminal justice system, there is a dearth of published literature that examines police officers' perceptions when interviewing this vulnerable group. This is concerning given that police officers are increasingly the first point of contact with these individuals. Using a Ground...

Investigations after critical events often depend on accurate and detailed recall accounts from operational witnesses (e.g., law enforcement officers, military personnel, and emergency responders). However, the challenging, and often stressful, nature of such events, together with the cognitive demands imposed on operational witnesses as a function...

Witness evidence often plays a vital role in the investigative process. This chapter focuses on the initial contact with the witness. We explore what type of information is typically sought at this first point of police contact and how the goals of eliciting information at an early stage of an investigation differ from the goals of subsequent inter...

Forensic investigations are an attempt to recreate a criminal incident in order to understand the truth about what happened and who was involved. The goal of any successful investigation is for the police to apprehend the perpetrators and gather sufficient reliable evidence for legal proceedings. At the outset, witness evidence often directs the en...

Forensic investigations are all about collecting evidence of what happened and who was involved, so that the police can apprehend the correct perpetrators, and the courts can convict them appropriately for the crimes they committed. This chapter examines the relationship between person descriptions and identification accuracy. Specifically, it cons...

The present study examined the effectiveness of retrieval support for witnesses who differ in working memory capacity (WMC) and source monitoring abilities. We hypothesised that the provision of retrieval support, relative to free recall, would compensate deficits linked to lower working memory and source monitoring abilities by providing more stru...

The effect of retrieval support on eyewitness recall was investigated in two experiments. Based on the outshining hypothesis, Experiment 1 tested whether retrieval support enhances witness performance (compared to free recall) especially when witnessing conditions are suboptimal (e.g., because witnesses were distracted during the crime). Eighty-eig...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...

Older adults’ memory reports are often less complete and accurate than those by younger adults. The current study assessed the suitability of the Self-Administered Interview (SAI) as retrieval support for older eyewitnesses, and examines whether experience with the SAI leads to improved performance on subsequent events where the SAI is not used. Pa...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...

Evidence-gathering begins at the scene of an incident. Available witnesses may be asked to provide an account of what happened, either in response to an open request for information or, in some regions, by completing a Self-Administered Interview (SAI©). In both cases, an investigative interview may be conducted at some later date. This study sough...

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) are as likely as the general population to find themselves in the situation of having to identify and/or describe a perpetrator's face to the police. However, limited verbal and memory abilities in people with ID might prevent them to engage in standard police procedures. Two experiments examined face reco...

We report on an experiment to investigate the top-down effect of exogenous social identity cues on a multiple-identity tracking task, a paradigm well suited to investigate the processes of binding identity to spatial locations. Here we simulated an eyewitness event in which dynamic targets, all to be tracked with equal effort, were identified from...

Memory conformity occurs when an individual endorses what other individuals remember about past events. Research on memory conformity is currently dominated by a 'forensic' perspective, which views the phenomenon as inherently undesirable. This is because conformity not only distorts the accuracy of an individual's memory, but also produces false c...

Accurately recalling a complex multi-actor incident presents witnesses with a cognitively demanding retrieval task. Given the important role played by temporal context in the retrieval process, the current research tests an innovative timeline technique to elicit information about multiple perpetrators and their actions. Adopting a standard mock wi...

INTRODUCTION KEY POINTS THE IMPACT OF MEMORY CONFORMITY IN REAL LIFE DIFFERENT METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO INVESTIGATING MEMORY CONFORMITY THEORETICAL ACCOUNTS OF WHY MEMORY CONFORMITY OCCURS THE FUTURE OF MEMORY CONFORMITY RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS FORENSIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE MEMORY CONFORMITY EFFECT REFERENCES

A comprehensive survey of the theory, research and forensic implications related to suggestibility in legal contexts that includes the latest research. Provides a useful digest for academics and a trusted text for students of forensic and applied psychology. A vital resource for legal practitioners who need to familiarize themselves with the subjec...

In many jurisdictions, law enforcement officers are permitted to discuss their recall of an incident when preparing their official statement. This practice has been criticized on the grounds that it lacks transparency and may produce inaccurate corroborative accounts. In the current study, 300 armed officers took part in an interactive staged crime...

Summary: Limited verbal abilities might act as a barrier to witnesses with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) to provide accurate testimony. This might be particularly problematic when the police need to create a facial composite image. Contrary to featural composite systems such as Electronic Facial Identification Technique (E-FIT), holistic systems s...

Two studies investigated whether an early recall opportunity, in the form of a self-administered interview (SAI), reduced forgetting and protected against the negative consequences of post-event misinformation. In both studies, participants viewed a simulated crime on DVD after which half immediately recorded their statement by using the SAI, where...

Understanding memory performance under different operational conditions is critical in many occupational settings. To examine the effect of physical exertion on memory for a witnessed event, we placed two groups of law-enforcement officers in a live, occupationally relevant scenario. One group had previously completed a high-intensity physical-assa...

SummaryA total of 236 children (7–8-year-olds and 13–14-year-olds) attempted identification from either target-present (TP) or target-absent (TA) video parades, after either two days or two weeks, following exposure to a live target. It was found that with TP line-ups, the most frequent response was a correct identification, but in the TA condition...

More than a century of psychology research has shown that memory is fallible. People’s memory can be influenced by information encountered after an incident has been witnessed—so-called postevent information, or PEI. In everyday life, one of the most common ways to encounter PEI is when individuals who have shared the same experience discuss this w...

Advances in technology have led to a new system for gathering facial identification evidence from eyewitnesses with accompanying changes in legislation in the UK. The current paper presents the responses of 1718 real witnesses and victims who attempted an identification from a video parade in Scotland in 2008. The witnesses comprised a large subset...

Here, we demonstrate that the decision to conform to another person's memory involves a strategic trade-off that balances the accuracy of one's own memory against that of another person. We showed participants three household scenes, one for 30 s, one for 60 s, and one for 120 s. Half were told that they would encode each scene for half as long as...

The Self-Administered Interview (SAI©) is a tool designed to elicit a comprehensive initial account from witnesses at the scene of an incident or shortly thereafter to inoculate against the loss of information associated with delayed interview. Drawing on the principles of the Cognitive Interview (CI), the SAI© provides witnesses with a series of i...

In the UK video parades are the preferred method of identification employed in criminal cases. This policy implementation has been employed with little or no evidence concerning its validity. The reported research examines the effect of new video technology on children's identification evidence. The study compared 7–9 and 13–15-year olds' ability t...

In Occupational Health and Safety, an accurate understanding of what happened before and during an incident or accident is critical in developing an understanding of the various causes. Understanding root causes and the controls necessary to prevent incidents reoccurring can be both difficult and time consuming and, if not undertaken properly, can...

When two people witness an event, they often discuss it. Because memory is not perfect, sometimes this discussion includes errors. One person's errors can become part of another person's account, and this proliferation of error can lead to miscarriages of justice. In this article, we describe the social and cognitive processes involved. Research sh...

Given the crucial role of eyewitness evidence, statements should be obtained as soon as possible after an incident. This is not always achieved due to demands on police resources. Two studies trace the development of a new tool, the Self-Administered Interview (SAI), designed to elicit a comprehensive initial statement. In Study 1, SAI participants...

People's responses during memory studies are affected by what other people say. This memory conformity effect has been shown in both free recall and recognition. Here we examine whether accurate, inaccurate, and suggested answers are affected similarly when the response criterion is varied. In the first study, participants saw four pictures of deta...

Inaccuracies in eyewitness accounts can occur when witnesses are exposed to post-event misinformation via discussion with a co-witness. The current study examined the role of co-witness relationship by comparing the memory performance of pairs of romantic couples, friends and previously unacquainted strangers with that of individuals. Ninety-six pa...

Interpersonal influences on cognition can distort memory judgements. Two experiments examined the nature of these 'social' influences, and whether their persistence is independent of their accuracy. Experiment 1 found that a confederate's social proximity, as well as the content and the confidence of their utterances, interactively modulates partic...

The memory conformity effect is when people's memories become similar to one another's following a discussion. The present study examined whether an individual's beliefs in the quality of their memory, relative to another person's, mediates susceptibility to memory conformity. Perceived encoding duration was manipulated by telling dyad members that...

When two people see the same event and discuss it, one person's memory report can influence what the other person subsequently claims to remember. We refer to this as memory conformity. In the present article, two factors underlying the memory conformity effect are investigated. First, are there any characteristics of the dialogue that predict memo...

This research was supported by a grant from the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) R000223649. Objectives. Errors in eyewitness accounts can occur when a witness comes into contact with post-event 'misinformation'. A common way to encounter misinformation is through face-to-face interaction, in particular, via conversation with oth...

It is well established that sequential presentation of faces in an eyewitness situation can reduce false identification rates. The effect of a sequential presentation on the probability of accurately identifying a culprit when present in a lineup is less clear. The current study examined the efficacy of the sequential procedure in culprit present l...

The current study investigated memory conformity effects between individuals who witness and then discuss a criminal event, employing a novel procedure whereby each member of a dyad watches a different video of the same event. Each video contained unique items that were thus seen only by one witness. Dyads in one condition were encouraged to discus...

Eyewitness research has identified sequential lineup testing as a way of reducing false lineup choices while maintaining accurate identifications. The authors examined the usefulness of this procedure for reducing false choices in older adults. Young and senior witnesses viewed a crime video and were later presented with target present orabsent lin...