EWT

Question 1

What is an EWT? (Macleod, 2007)

Answer 1

An account given by people of an event they have witnessed

Question 2

What are the key areas of an EWT?

Answer 2

Police investigation

Criminal trials

Question 3

Police investigation

Answer 3

• how police elicit info from witnesses, victims and suspects
• through interviewing and identification processes

Question 4

Criminal trials

Answer 4

• questioning of witnesses by p and d
• guidance from judge
• jury verdicts

Question 5

Adams Randall Dale

Answer 5

• EW who was in fact the killer framed Mr.Adams

- film: the thin blue line

Question 6

History of EWT

Answer 6

Binet

Question 7

Psychological factors that affect EWT

Answer 7

• anxiety/stress
• memory retrieval
• reconstructive memory
• weapon focus
• leading question

Question 8

Schema theory

Answer 8

A mental representation of knowledge

• can distort or enhance memory
• what we already know will influence the outcome of information processing

Question 9

Encoding

Answer 9

Paying attention and transforming information into a meaningful memory

Question 10

Storage

Answer 10

How info is stored

Question 11

Retrieval

Answer 11

Recover the experience from memory

Question 12

Bartlett (1932) war of the ghosts

Answer 12

• carried out a large number of studies: showed the way in which ppts make sense of something affects the way they recall it later
• memory is an active constructive process influenced by both internal and external factors

Question 13

Loftus (1979)

Answer 13

• witnesses are creating reconstructions of the crime based on their own schematic understanding of the world

Question 14

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Answer 14

• gave higher estimates when the word smashed was used instead of hit

Question 15

Loftus and Zanni (1975)

Answer 15

“The” broken headlight rather than “a” broken headlight, more responses for “the”

Question 16

Loftus, Miller and Burns (1978)

Answer 16

• was able to get some ppts to recall that they had seen a sign at the end of the road, even though there wasn’t

Question 17

The Devlin Report

Answer 17

• witnesses accounts of what they have seen are little better than guesses (loftus)
• unless the circumstances were highly unusual , EWT should not result in a conviction in the absence of other evidence

Question 18

Stress in EWT

Answer 18

Small increases in anxiety and arousal tend to increase the accuracy of Memory but huge increase can have a negative effect

Question 19

Loftus (1979) weapon focus effect

Answer 19

• ppts recognised the man who came out with pen rather than the knife

Question 20

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 20

• an increase in arousal improves performance but only up to a certain point
• once arousal has passed a critical point called the optimum, performance tends to decline

Question 21

Why?

Answer 21

• witnessing violence raises witnesses arousal level past optimum, leading to poorer memory performance

Question 22

Estimator variable

Answer 22

• variables not controllable in CJS

Question 23

Examples

Answer 23

• exposure time
• seriousness of crime
• weapon focus
• age
• intoxication
• physical attractiveness

Question 24

System variables

Answer 24

• retention interval
• types of questioning
• identification procedures
• interview procedures
• line up ID parade

Question 25

Is EW identification reliable?

Answer 25

No one of the least reliable forms

Question 26

Busey and loftus (2007)

Answer 26

Problems with line ups

Question 27

4 problems with line ups?

Answer 27

• physical bias
• no double line procedures
• inadequately matched fillers
• unconscious transference

Question 28

Devlin Committee (1976)

Answer 28

• 45% led to identification of the suspect
• 82% of those identified were convicted
• in 350 cases only EW was the evidence

Question 29

Well (1998)

Answer 29

• examined 40 cases in USA in which DNA was found to exonerate a previously convicted person
• 90% cases involved EW evidence in which they falsely identified a person

Question 30

4 factors that influence EW response during identification parade

Answer 30

1. Instructions given to the witness
2. Content - ‘selection of fillers’
3. Presentation method - simultaneous or sequential
4. Behavioural influence - administrator role,

Question 31

What did the Devlin Committee report say?

Answer 31

Juries should not convict on the basis of EWT alone

Question 32

What do system variables focus on?

Answer 32

Memory retrieval