COUNTERING Counterintuitive Testimony (Adult, handout)
Often prosecution utilizes a counterintuitive “expert” to explain away problematic behaviors on the part of the complaining witness. Dr. Simpson offers a CLE training and 85-page handout on how to effectively challenge their expert.
- Seven specific strategies for cross
- A cure for a non-problem
- Accounting for true, unfounded, or false sexual assault claims
- Symptoms are not falsifiable
- Motivations for intentional false reporting
- Failure to account for confounding variables
- Confirmation bias
- The devil is in the details.
- Critique of:
- Freeze-Flight-Fight and Tonic Immobility
- Acting normal following the alleged assault
- Delayed disclosure
- Continued relationship with the accused
- Inconsistent, piecemeal, changing or incomplete memories
- Recantation
Memory Drift
This compilation gathers research using the term ‘drift’ in studies of memory strength, recall, forgetting, and decision processes, alongside work on warning signals and predator memory. The cited papers examine different tasks and models, including delayed judgments of learning and age-related memory performance, so the collection presents research topics rather than direct evidence about memory changes in a particular witness.
Memory in the Courtroom: What Every Attorney Should Know
Eye witness testimony is central to almost every aspect of a criminal proceedings. Yet this central dynamic is rarely taught for attorneys. Dr. Simpson has provided this training for the State Bar of Arizona (ten times), for the Pima County Public Defender’s Office, and multiple legal offices for the Air Force and Marine JAGS. This 199-page seminar handout is packed with research regarding:
- Principles of memory
- Memory “failures”
- Suggestibility
- Eyewitness memory
- Cognitive interview techniques
- Child eyewitness memory
- The NICHD Standard
- Alcoholic blackout
- Childhood amnesic barrier
- Confirmation bias
- Context effect
- Cross-race effects
- Cryptomnesia
- Egocentric bias
- Fading affect bias
- Self-generation effect
- Hindsight bias
- Illusion-of-Truth effect
- Imagination Inflation
- Leveling and Sharpening
- Misattribution of Memory
- Misinformation effect
- Mood-congruent memory
- Schema / Script memory
- Gist memory
- Telescoping effect
- Weapon focus
Memory Suggestibility in Adults
This collection summarizes research on how suggestion and stress can affect adults’ reports and memories, including reconstruction of alcohol-related memory gaps and experiments involving misinformation or guided recall. The studies described report that outside cues can shape recollection and that interrogation stress or persuasive tactics affected suggestibility and false-confession outcomes in some participant groups.