![People who are absorbed in their devices are less likely to spot a crime or notice suspicious activity, which makes detectives’ jobs even tougher.](http://web.archive.org./web/20201202210719im_/https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/34069447ff66dd0917b11a6ca3f906c730243cf5/0_0_2560_1536/master/2560.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=d65568d9546bf1f57242e68df2f03e1f)
For all its benefits, modern technology can also make it tougher to solve crimes. Would-be eyewitnesses are sometimes distracted because their eyes are glued to their cellphones. “People are paying less attention to things around them,” says former NYPD detective Joe Giacalone, now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Observation skills can be learned, but you have to be able to take your head out of your phone.”
In this interview, Gary Wells, an eyewitness expert and Iowa State University psychology professor, speaks about the connections between attention, memory and gadgets – and how detectives can overcome the challenges they pose to build a case.
How are cellphones changing our ability to notice, remember and react to crimes?
Today, people are absorbed in their devices a fair amount of the time they are in mass settings. They are less apt to spot a crime in process. They are less likely to notice something suspicious about someone’s behavior. They are less likely to notice someone from a wanted poster or a missing persons poster.
On the flipside, crimes get reported much faster because of cellphones. It used to be that there were significant delays because people had to get to a landline.
Some detectives worry about the introduction of Wi-Fi on mass transit like the New York City subway.
Distraction was always true on some level – for example, being on the subway with your head buried in a newspaper. But today, people are engrossed in things that are self-relevant, [like] social media or emails. This isn’t just entertainment – these are our lives.
Self-relevant things trigger all kinds of things in the brain. And emotion often narrows attention to the emotion-stimulating event. In this case, if it’s a personal device providing that information, it keeps us even more focused on the device.
We’ve had to pass laws saying don’t text while driving. These devices are such a powerful draw, as is our interest in timeliness. Even the person texting while driving knows it’s dangerous. But they can’t help themselves. We’re going to end up going in and trying to rein back some of those problems.
Is there a hierarchy of tech distractions?
The highest potential problem is the one that takes the most of our time and has the most users. [Smart]phones occupy the eye. If you add earphones – that’s technology, too – that reduces the likelihood of recognizing events that would normally draw our attention. We don’t hear gunshots. We don’t hear screams. One of the main ways our attention is drawn is through sound. Earphones cut down on that.
Is modern tech all bad news when it comes to good eyewitnesses?
The upside is that people are using their devices to record something that is happening. Video can resolve certain kinds of issues like witnesses giving different accounts.
Eyewitness memory is not like a video in a number of ways. It doesn’t capture all the detail. You can’t replay it. Eyewitness testimony can also change over time. We, as humans, don’t like having gaps in our memory, so we start filling in details. Or maybe someone suggests something to us.
Is all video helpful?
There’s a reason why you’re more likely to find a cellphone video of something that has legal relevance when there is law enforcement on the scene. Police draw people’s attention. They’re a flag that this could be something important. It has to occur to people to turn on their devices and point them in a particular direction.
There’s a tendency when there is video, though, to overvalue that video. We are wired to give more weight to what we can see. But what you don’t see is what happened right before the camera went on. You might see the person that responded, not the one who provoked. [If you press record] after the thing that drew your attention, it’s already too late to capture the critical event.
What are the implications of social media, including the future of admissible evidence of things like Facebook Live video?
These things can be pretty messy when they pop up. They tend to get admitted into evidence, but no one really knows what to do with them. I think there will be issues that go well into the future. Technology has a way of throwing a lot of curveballs our way.
We’re also seeing people start to do their own investigations by getting on Facebook. We’re worried about that. They peruse social media pages. They start looking for people who they think look like the person who did it. Their next step is to find that person. A lot of times victims will come to police and say, “I found the guy.” Law enforcement doesn’t really like losing control of investigations. We’re going to end up in the short run where it becomes a standard admonition for victims to not engage in their own investigation. Detectives document every step along the line. These individuals don’t.
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