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The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory

Memory experts are sometimes asked to evaluate the validity of accounts of witnesses, victims, or suspects. In some of these cases, they are asked what effect alcohol has on the validity of such accounts. In this article, we offer a guide on what expert witnesses can reliably say about how alcohol a...

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Autores principales: Otgaar, Henry, Riesthuis, Paul, Ramaekers, Johannes G., Garry, Maryanne, Kloft, Lilian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9760759/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36544435
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.980533
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author Otgaar, Henry
Riesthuis, Paul
Ramaekers, Johannes G.
Garry, Maryanne
Kloft, Lilian
author_facet Otgaar, Henry
Riesthuis, Paul
Ramaekers, Johannes G.
Garry, Maryanne
Kloft, Lilian
author_sort Otgaar, Henry
collection PubMed
description Memory experts are sometimes asked to evaluate the validity of accounts of witnesses, victims, or suspects. In some of these cases, they are asked what effect alcohol has on the validity of such accounts. In this article, we offer a guide on what expert witnesses can reliably say about how alcohol affects memory. We do so by resorting to effect sizes from previous studies and meta-analytic work, and address this novel question: Are these effect sizes meaningful in legal cases? More specifically, we argue that any determination of whether individual studies about alcohol and memory are practically relevant for legal cases, scientists must focus on the smallest effect size of interest. We make the case that a decrease or increase of only 1 detail, especially an incorrect detail, should be regarded as the smallest effect size of interest in this line of research. In line with this idea, we show that effect sizes in the alcohol and memory literature are often larger than this smallest effect size of interest. This finding is important because it implies that alcohol often exerts a practically relevant and meaningful detrimental effect on the reporting of both correct and incorrect details, which in turn negatively affects the validity of witness testimony.
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spelling pubmed-97607592022-12-20 The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory Otgaar, Henry Riesthuis, Paul Ramaekers, Johannes G. Garry, Maryanne Kloft, Lilian Front Psychol Psychology Memory experts are sometimes asked to evaluate the validity of accounts of witnesses, victims, or suspects. In some of these cases, they are asked what effect alcohol has on the validity of such accounts. In this article, we offer a guide on what expert witnesses can reliably say about how alcohol affects memory. We do so by resorting to effect sizes from previous studies and meta-analytic work, and address this novel question: Are these effect sizes meaningful in legal cases? More specifically, we argue that any determination of whether individual studies about alcohol and memory are practically relevant for legal cases, scientists must focus on the smallest effect size of interest. We make the case that a decrease or increase of only 1 detail, especially an incorrect detail, should be regarded as the smallest effect size of interest in this line of research. In line with this idea, we show that effect sizes in the alcohol and memory literature are often larger than this smallest effect size of interest. This finding is important because it implies that alcohol often exerts a practically relevant and meaningful detrimental effect on the reporting of both correct and incorrect details, which in turn negatively affects the validity of witness testimony. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-12-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9760759/ /pubmed/36544435 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.980533 Text en Copyright © 2022 Otgaar, Riesthuis, Ramaekers, Garry and Kloft. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Otgaar, Henry
Riesthuis, Paul
Ramaekers, Johannes G.
Garry, Maryanne
Kloft, Lilian
The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory
title The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory
title_full The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory
title_fullStr The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory
title_full_unstemmed The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory
title_short The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory
title_sort importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9760759/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36544435
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.980533
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