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Eyewitnesses miss big changes in their environment, like the person in front of them

An alert reader points to this remarkable video of an experiment regarding "change blindness" to judge how observant (or not) average people are in casual settings, via Boing Boing:If 75% of people in the experiment don't notice they're all of a sudden speaking with a different person, how likely do you think most eyewitnesses would be to identify the correct person later in a police lineup or photo array?More and more, studies like this have convinced me that eyewitness testimony should always require corroboration unless it can be established that the witness knew the defendant before the offense.See related Grits posts:How much do eyewitnesses really see?Eyewitnesses and the 'feeling of knowing'Eyewitnesses in staged test only 8% accurateMore on the fallibility of eyewitness testimonycontinue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on December 15, 2009 (boomark / email).