Dr Rachel Zajac
 Contact
Details
Tel 64 3 479 3988
Email rachelz@psy.otago.ac.nz
I work at the intersection of psychology and law. More specifically,
I study the factors that influence people’s ability
to provide reliable evidence about events they have witnessed.
Here are some of the questions that my students and I are
currently trying to answer:
What effect does cross-examination have on children’s
testimony?
The majority of children testifying in adversarial criminal
trials undergo cross-examination, during which their testimony
is challenged by the opposing lawyer in an attempt to discredit
it. By examining court transcripts and conducting experimental
studies of children’s responses to this type of questioning,
we have repeatedly shown that most children make changes to
their earlier testimony when cross-examined. Furthermore,
these changes do not appear to be restricted to corrections
of earlier mistakes. In fact, cross-examination-style questioning
appears to exert an overall negative effect on children’s
accuracy. Our current research is aimed at finding out why
this occurs, which children are most at risk, whether we can
intervene to facilitate accuracy, and whether adults may also
struggle to answer cross-examination questions accurately.
Can an eyewitness’s evidence become contaminated
through discussions with another witness to the same crime?
Crimes often involve more than one witness, and eyewitnesses
are highly likely to discuss what they saw with each other
before investigators arrive on the scene. Unfortunately, incorrect
information provided by one eyewitness can contaminate another
witness’s evidence. We recently demonstrated that this
effect extends well beyond witness’s verbal reports
about what they saw, by providing empirical evidence that
co-witness misinformation about a perpetrator’s appearance
can increase the chances of mistaken identification from a
photographic lineup. We are now trying to pinpoint the specific
conditions under which this occurs.
How can we help children to avoid making mistaken
identifications on photographic lineups?
There are numerous crimes in which a child may hold the only
clue to the perpetrator’s identity. Unfortunately, traditional
procedures for eliciting eyewitness identification evidence
can pose significant difficulty for children. In particular,
children appear reluctant to reject photographic lineups,
even when the perpetrator is not present. Given the devastating
implications of mistaken identification in a legal context,
it is crucial that researchers attempt to better understand
children’s lineup decisions and, where possible, intervene.
We have recently developed the ‘wildcard,’ a simple
technique to improve children’s identification accuracy.
We are now examining the conditions under which the wildcard
is successful, and whether its success may extend to other
groups of witnesses who are prone to error (e.g., older adult
witnesses).
Zajac, R., & Cannan, P. (in press). Cross-examination
of sexual assault complainants: A developmental comparison.
Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
Zajac, R., Jury, E., & O’Neill, S. (in press). The
influence of psychosocial factors on children’s responses
to cross-examination style questioning. Applied Cognitive
Psychology.
Zajac, R., & Henderson, N. (2009). Don’t it make
my brown eyes blue: Co-witness misinformation about a target’s
appearance can impair target-absent line-up performance. Memory,
17, 266-278.
Zajac, R., & Karageorge, A. (2009). The wildcard: A simple
technique for improving children’s target-absent lineup
performance. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 358-368.
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