Tag: Memory and Suggestibility

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
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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
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