Why am I passionate about this?
I'm a professor of cognitive and forensic cognitive science. I have consulted on hundreds of criminal cases, most involving violent crime, and have published a body of research on the cognitive dynamics involved in eyewitness memory, officer-involved shootings, and training for IED detection in counterterrorism environments. The dynamics I've studied in the law-enforcement/forensic realm have proven to be important in the realm of firefighting and other first-response emergency services, as I also discuss in my book Thinking Under Pressure. This is an important field of study across the emergency and first response services, and will probably become more important in the future.
Matthew's book list on cognitive science and the criminal justice system
Why did Matthew love this book?
Professor Elizabeth Loftus essentially launched the modern field of eyewitness studies with her experiments on the dynamics of human memory in the eyewitness context, and this book discusses her most important experiments, major studies which reinvigorated this important field.
She demonstrated that memory can be reconfigured in the presence of post-event information, to the degree that a given eyewitness memory may bear no resemblance to the actual events supposedly being remembered.
This is among the most important books in forensic cognitive science, the psychological basis of law enforcement, and the criminal justice system.
Loftus began the studies which culminated in my own book. Her work focused on eyewitness memory, but has implications far beyond that realm in more modern research.
The dynamics she identified operate in realms as disparate as officer-involved shootings, training for the detection of terrorist bombs, and even beliefs in paranormal phenomena and "sightings" of such…
1 author picked Eyewitness Testimony as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Every year hundreds of defendants are convicted on little more than the say-so of a fellow citizen. Although psychologists have suspected for decades that an eyewitness can be highly unreliable, new evidence leaves no doubt that juries vastly overestimate the credibility of eyewitness accounts. It is a problem that the courts have yet to solve or face squarely.
In Eyewitness Testimony, Elizabeth Loftus makes the psychological case against the eyewitness. Beginning with the basics of eyewitness fallibility, such as poor viewing conditions, brief exposure, and stress, Loftus moves to more subtle factors, such as expectations, biases, and personal stereotypes, all…
- Coming soon!