About this Research Topic
A large number of witnesses, victims, and suspects are intoxicated at the time of the crime and/or investigation, and legal practitioners (e.g., police, judges), as well as laypeople (e.g., jurors), may be skeptical of the information intoxicated people provide.
However, the research area is still in its infancy and there is still much that the science does not know concerning when and how alcohol and drugs affect cognition and memory (e.g., verbal recall and face recognition, state-dependent learning, suggestibility), decision making (e.g., confession/denial rates), and meta-cognition (e.g., source monitoring and confidence judgments) among witnesses, victims, and suspects.
The goal of the call for papers on this Research Topic is to encourage scientists around the globe and from different research, labs to submit their latest cutting-edge studies on intoxicated witnesses, victims, and suspects in an attempt to better unravel how alcohol and drugs affect memory and cognition within legal contexts.
Given the high prevalence of intoxicated witnesses, victims, and suspects and the relatively small body of research on this area, this call for a Research Topic on how alcohol and other drugs affect people’s cognition and memory is of high importance for theory development and scientific advancement. Empirical and theoretical findings in this scientific area will be of significant applied value for legal practitioners and society as a whole. Advancements in this field will lead to improved access to justice for all. A concrete example of the applied value of this research is that more studies are needed to enable the development of national and international evidence-based policy guidelines on how law enforcement and other legal practitioners should conduct investigative interviews with alcohol- and/or drug-intoxicated witnesses, victims and suspects in order to obtain as much accurate information as possible.
We are seeking a diverse body of work for this special issue and we encourage the submission of studies from many different countries around the globe.
The following types of manuscripts are invited for this call (corresponding to top tier articles):
- Original research articles (empirical data)
- Systematic reviews (meta-analysis, systematic literature reviews)
- Methods articles (significant method important for the scientific development)
The scope includes experimental studies in labs and quasi-experimental field studies in bars, using different stimulus materials and breath alcohol concentrations on a wide variety of different outcomes (e.g., confessions, denials, recall, meta-cognition, face identification).
We also welcome archival research (e.g., the relationship between alcohol and case charging decisions, plea-bargaining), studies that use surveys (e.g., police perceptions’ on intoxicated persons) and interview-based methods, mock jury decision studies on credibility, comparative studies across jurisdictions, and studies that investigate intersectional matters (such as the interplay of sociodemographic factors and appraisals of memory evidence given by alcohol-intoxicated witnesses, victims, and suspects).
However, the research area is still in its infancy and there is still much that the science does not know concerning when and how alcohol and drugs affect cognition and memory (e.g., verbal recall and face recognition, state-dependent learning, suggestibility), decision making (e.g., confession/denial rates), and meta-cognition (e.g., source monitoring and confidence judgments) among witnesses, victims, and suspects.
The goal of the call for papers on this Research Topic is to encourage scientists around the globe and from different research, labs to submit their latest cutting-edge studies on intoxicated witnesses, victims, and suspects in an attempt to better unravel how alcohol and drugs affect memory and cognition within legal contexts.
Given the high prevalence of intoxicated witnesses, victims, and suspects and the relatively small body of research on this area, this call for a Research Topic on how alcohol and other drugs affect people’s cognition and memory is of high importance for theory development and scientific advancement. Empirical and theoretical findings in this scientific area will be of significant applied value for legal practitioners and society as a whole. Advancements in this field will lead to improved access to justice for all. A concrete example of the applied value of this research is that more studies are needed to enable the development of national and international evidence-based policy guidelines on how law enforcement and other legal practitioners should conduct investigative interviews with alcohol- and/or drug-intoxicated witnesses, victims and suspects in order to obtain as much accurate information as possible.
We are seeking a diverse body of work for this special issue and we encourage the submission of studies from many different countries around the globe.
The following types of manuscripts are invited for this call (corresponding to top tier articles):
- Original research articles (empirical data)
- Systematic reviews (meta-analysis, systematic literature reviews)
- Methods articles (significant method important for the scientific development)
The scope includes experimental studies in labs and quasi-experimental field studies in bars, using different stimulus materials and breath alcohol concentrations on a wide variety of different outcomes (e.g., confessions, denials, recall, meta-cognition, face identification).
We also welcome archival research (e.g., the relationship between alcohol and case charging decisions, plea-bargaining), studies that use surveys (e.g., police perceptions’ on intoxicated persons) and interview-based methods, mock jury decision studies on credibility, comparative studies across jurisdictions, and studies that investigate intersectional matters (such as the interplay of sociodemographic factors and appraisals of memory evidence given by alcohol-intoxicated witnesses, victims, and suspects).
Keywords: alcohol, drugs, cognition, memory, meta-memory, suggestibility, witnesses, victims, suspects, interviews, interrogations, police, credibility
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
