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Study Says Cannabis Consumers Make Reliable Eyewitnesses

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[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]E[/dropcap]yewitnesses to crimes are regularly under the influence of drugs, such as alcohol or cannabis. It’s been widely accepted that those under the influence of alcohol tend to be unreliable sources of information and the same was assumed for cannabis, but there is very little research on how cannabis affects eyewitness memory. A new study suggests that school of thought isn’t true.

recent study conducted by researchers at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Florida International University published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, challenged the stoner stereotype and found that cannabis consumers aren’t exactly liabilities when it comes to being eyewitnesses. Cannabis has already been shown to improve cognitive performance and it has less of an impact on youth cognitive function than previously thought.

Researchers took to an Amsterdam “coffee shop” and recruited 120 adults (a mix of sober and intoxicated) and showed them a two-minute video of a convenience store robbery and were asked to recall as many details about the video that they could. The study found that the intoxicated participants “reported significantly fewer correct details which showed that the high participants weren’t wrong more often than the sober participants; instead they just remembered less details.

Of the four tests conducted, this test was considered an outlier as people who had consumed cannabis were just as accurate or inaccurate for the details they did recall.

The next part of the study consisted of picking the suspect out of a line-up. The study found that, contrary to expectations, intoxicated participants performed just as accurately as the sober participants in picking the suspect out or correctly noting his absence if he wasn’t there. The intoxicated participants were also more confident in their responses and the study showed there was a strong correlation between their confidence and their accuracy.

The study breaks new ground, but not without issues. For example, there was no random allocation and researchers didn’t have an accurate measure of the participants’ level of intoxication. The research team has recommended future research focus on greater experimental control.

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