EWT Flashcards
The stages of EWT
-Actual events
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-Acquisition: The information the person receives. Affected by poor viewing conditions, weapon focus, effect of expectations
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-Storage: Information the person stores in the memory. Affected by misleading information, Source misattribution errors (schemas)
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-Retrieval: Information retrieved by the person at a later date. Affected by leading questions and ‘best guesses’ in a lineup
Weapon focus
- Phenomenon caused by anxiety where witnesses are draw to focus on a weapon and thus neglect to process other information about a crime
- Has negative effect on recall
- Supported by Loftus (1979)/Loftus and Messot (1987) and challenged by Christianson and Hubinette (1993)
Schemas
- Knowledge packages in memory
- Built up based on experiences of the world
- Enable us to make sense of new information/interpret familiar situations
- Supported by Brewer and Treyens (1981) and Brandsford and Johnson (1972)
- Criticized as schema is vague concept and we aren’t sure how they are acquired in the first place
Cohen’s (1993) 5 ways in which schemas aid reconstructive memory
1) we tend to ignore aspects of a scene that do not fit the schema
2) We can store the central features of an event without having to store exact details (ie the gist of a conversation)
3) We can make sense of something we have seen by ‘filling in’ missing information (ie see someone running via bus stop, assume they are running for a bus)
4) We distort memories of events to fit to prior expectations
5) may use schemas to provide basis of correct guess (ie can’t remember breakfast 1 week ago, breakfast ‘schema’ suggests cereal is probable answer)
Age as a factor in EWT
- Children may sometimes be the only witness to a crime (particularly in sexual abuse cases)
- Can recall less information due to inferior encoding, inferior retrieval capabilities and lack of schema
- May be less accurate though this is disputed
(i) Geiselman/Padilla (1988) found children aged 7-12 recalled less accurately than adults when remembering details of a filmed robbery
(ii) BUT Cassel et al. (1996) found no difference
Encoding as a factor affecting children’s EWT
- Ceci and Bruck (1993) suggest children may be inaccurate as they lack the appropriate schema for the event. This makes it difficult to encode the event properly
- However children may be more accurate than adults, in some situations adults prior knowledge/expectations
Storage as a factor affecting children’s EWT
- Prolonged periods of time between encoding/retrieval cause poor recognition
- Childrens EWT will suffer as storage time increases
- People are more difficult to remember than actions
- Evidence: Flin et al. (1992)
Retrieval as a factor affecting children’s EWT
- Children omit more information more freely than adults, though relevant, non suggestive cues can elicit accurate information
- If children are asked leading questions, they are more likely than adults to give the answer implied by the question
- Leichtman and Ceci found if children are repeatedly given misleading information in questions they will incorporate it into their memory
Use of leading questions
- A question worded in some way that it may bias how a respondent answers
- Affects accuracy of statement and can plant misleading information
- Supported by Loftus and Palmer (1974)
- For example: “What did the man look like?” vs “what did the black man look like?”
Misleading information
- Loftus and her colleagues have investigated whether misleading information can change or supplement a memory of a past incident
- Usually a question or statement that wrongly implies something happened when it did not
- Old memory is, it is assumed, deleted and replaced with a new false one. However some claim the original is still there, just obscured by false information
- Supported by Loftus
Effect of blatantly wrong misleading information
- Memorable details are less subject to tampering by misleading information than peripheral details
- People can sometimes ignore new information, leaving the old memory intact
- Supported by Loftus (1979)
Evaluation of research into misleading information
- Influential: shows that memorys can be tampered with by information received after the event. Has affected the way witnesses are questioned
- However, studies criticised for artificiality (loftus). Difficult to reproduce recall conditions (unexpected details/tense atmosphere, like in court) in a lab.
- Way that loftus has tested pps recall has been criticised. Has been suggested that the order that questions are asked in (logical order is better) affects recall, and that people are more accurate if they are not forced to answer if unsure (like in the cognitive interview)
The Cognitive interview
-Developed by Geiselman et al. (1985) for police use, to elicit more accurate information from witnesses
Recreate the context of the original incident: Try to recall the setting, including details such as weather, lighting, smells, feelings, to put you back at the scene
Report every detail: Report all information about the event that you can remember, even if you think it is irrelevant
Recall the event in different orders: Reverse the order, start with the most memorable event and work backwards ect
Change perspective: Describe the incident from the perspective of others who were there at the time
Supported by: Geiselman (1988) and Bekerian/Dennet (1993)
Ceci and Bruiks recommendations for improving EWT in children
- Pre school children are more suggestible than older children, who in turn are more suggestible than adults
- Children may get this gist/details wrong if exposed to misleading information or leading questions
- Interviews should be video/audio tapes
- Much evidence for the accuracy of children’s EWT has come from laboratory experiments so there are validity issues, but it is ethically impossible to replicate events
- Those collecting children’s EWT should be aware of the factors affecting the accuracy of a child’s report (so they can, for example, avoid leading questions)
