Accuracy of EWT

Question 1

What is eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

Refers to an account given by an individual(s) of an event that they have witnessed

Question 2

What is misleading information?

Answer 2

Incorrect info given to an eyewitness usually after an event which can distort what people remember about an event

Question 3

What are leading questions?

Answer 3

A question that is phrased in such a way that it implies or leads an individual to a particular answer

Question 4

What study investigated the impact of leading questions on EWT?

Answer 4

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Question 5

What occurred in the leading questions study?

Answer 5

• Lab experiment
• 45 participants watched seven film clips of traffic accidents and answered a questionnaire about the clip afterwards
• Questionnaire contained one critical question: “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”
• One group received the verb hit in the question, whereas the other 4 groups were given the verbs smashed, collided, bumped or contacted in place of the word hit
• It was found that the more aggressive the verb was, the higher the guess of the average speed estimate was
  (bumped = 31.8mph, smashed 40.5mph)

Question 6

Why do leading questions affect EWT?

Answer 6

Response bias: the question affects our answer but leaves the memory intact
Substitution bias: the question alters the memory of the event

Question 7

What occurred in the broken glass study?

Answer 7

• Loftus and Palmer (1974)
• 150 participants were shown a 1 min film clip of a car accident
• Ppts were asked about speed using verbs hit or smashed, and a third control group received no question
• A week later participants were asked if they had seen any broken glass on the floor (the true answer was no)
• 16 ppts in the group with the verb smashed saw glass, compared to 6 in the control group

Question 8

What is post event discussion?

Answer 8

Occurs when there is more than one witness to an event and these witnesses discuss what they saw with each other

Question 9

Who investigated the effect of post event discussion on EWT?

Answer 9

Gabbert et al. (2003)

Question 10

What occurred in the post event discussion study?

Answer 10

• 60 students and 60 older adults watched a video of a girl stealing money from a wallet
• Ppts were either tested individually or in pairs
• Ppts in the paired group were told they had watched the same clip, but they had in fact watched the clip from different angles and only one had actually seen the girl stealing
• Ppts in paired group discussed the crime together, then all participants completed a questionnaire about the event
• 71% in paired group recalled info they hadn’t seen, 60% said the girl was guilty when they hadn’t seen her commit the crime

Question 11

What is memory contamination?

Answer 11

memories become distorted or altered because they combine info from other witnesses with their own memories

Question 12

What is memory conformity?

Answer 12

witnesses go along with each other to win social approval because they believe the other is correcf

Question 13

AO3 - real world application ✅

Answer 13

E: Consequences of inaccurate EWT in the real world can be devastating.
E: Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that research on this has led to police officers changing their questioning technique in order to avoid the distorting effect of misleading information.
L: Research into this area can make an important positive difference to the lives of real people e.g. by improving the way in which the legal system works and by increasing the chances of eyewitnesses giving sound evidence and decreasing the likelihood of wrongful convictions.

Question 14

AO3: evidence against memory conformity ❌

Answer 14

P: A limitation of the memory conformity explanation is evidence that post event discussion actually alters eyewitness testimony.
E: Okagerberg and Wright (2008) showed their participants fim clips. There were two versions, for example In one the managers hair was dark brown, but light brown in the other. Participants discussed the clips in pairs, each having seen different versions.
E: Results showed that they did not report what they had seen in the clips or what they had heard from the co-witnesses, but a blend of the two (o.g. a common answer to the hair question was not light brown or dark brown but medium brown).
L: This suggests that memory itself is distorted through contamination by post event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformily.

Question 15

AO3: evidence against substitution ❌

Answer 15

P: One limitation of the substitution explanation is that eyewitness testimony is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others.
E: For example Sutherland and Hayne (2001) showed participants a video clip. When participants were later asked misleading questions, they recall was more accurate for central details of the event than for peripheral ones.
E: Presumably the participants attention was focused on the central features of the event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information.
L: This suggests that the original memories for central details survived and were not distorted, and this outcome is not predicted by the substitution exclamation

Question 16

What is anxiety?

Answer 16

A state of emotional and physical arousal
Emotions include worried thought and feelings of tension
Physical changes include increased heart rate and sweatiness

Question 17

What is the study for negative impact of anxiety?

Answer 17

Johnson and Scott (1976)
- ppts were told they were taking part in a lab study
- whilst waiting, they overheard an argument in the next room
- in the low anxiety condition, a man walked out carrying a pen and grease on his hands
- in the high anxiety condition, they overheard the sound of breaking glass and a man walked out holding a paper knife covered in blood
- when asked to identify the man afterwards, 49% of low anxiety condition did, compared to only 33% of the high anxiety condition

Question 18

What is the study for postitive impact of anxiety?

Answer 18

Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
- 21 people were witnesses to a store shooting, 13 witnesses agreed to take part in a study where they were asked to recall the events 4-5 months afterwards
- the stories they gave were compared to the original police report
- ppts were also asked to judge their stress on a 7 point scale
- recall was found to be better when stress levels were high: 88% vs 75%

Question 19

What is the Yerkes-Dodson Law?

Answer 19

Also known as the inverted U theory
Looks at the relationship between emotional arousal and performance
Deffenbacher (1983) applied this to EWT
Lower levels of anxiety produced lower levels of recall
Accuracy increases with anxiety, however only up to a certain point

Question 20

AO3: contradictory research

Answer 20

P: research into the weapon focus effect has shown it may not be as relevant as initially thought
E: Pickel (1988) suggested that the reason people focus on weapons may be because they are surprised at what they see, rather than due to anxiety
E: in his own study, Pickel used scissors, a handgun, wallet or a raw chicken as handheld items during a hairdressing video; accuracy was found to be poorer in the high peculiarity conditions
L: this suggests that weapon focus effect is due to peculiarity rather than anxiety and therefore doesn’t tell us anything about the effects of anxiety on EWT

Question 21

AO3: anxiety can have positive impact on accuracy of recall

Answer 21

A strength is that evidence shows that anxiety can have positive effects on the accuracy of recall.
Christianson and Hübinette (1993) interviewed 58 witnesses to real bank robbers in Sweden. Some witnesses were directly involved; such as bank - tellers, and some were indirectly involved, such as bystanders.
The researchers assumed that those directly involved would experience the most anxiety It was found that recall was over 75% accurate across all witnesses,
especially for those that were directly invoived.
These findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety doesn’t reduce accuracy of recall for witnesses, and may even enhance it

Question 22

AO3: research breaks ethical guidelines

Answer 22

A final criticism of research into the impact of anxiety is that numerous ethical guidelines are often broken.
For example, in Johnson and Scott’s study, the participants were decie about the nature of the experiment, as they thought they were being invited to an interview
They also failed to protect participants from harm, as some participant were exposed to a man hoiding a bloodied knife, which could have provoked extreme feelings of anxiety.
This is an issue, as these participants have left with extreme stress or anxiety, which completely goes against what ethical guidelines state. There is a duty of care that researchers must fulfill for participants and this is not completed during research into impact of anxiety, making it