eye witness testimonies

Question 1

what is an eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

• refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed
  — e.g, eyewitnesses may be required to describe a trial of a robbery or a road accident

Question 2

what factors can affect the reliability of eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 2

• attention
• weapon focus
• reconstructive memory - schemas and simplification
• stress
• leading questions
• the misinformation effect
  -usualness

Question 3

how can schemas affect the reliability of eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 3

• people store information in the way that makes the most sense to them and we make sense of information by trying to fit it into schemas, which are a way of organizing information
• ## schemas are capable of distorting unfamiliar or unconsciously ‘unacceptable’ information in order to ‘fit in’ with our existing knowledge or schemas = this can result in unreliable eyewitness testimony

Question 4

what is weapon focus and how does it affect the reliability of eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 4

• refers to an eyewitness’s concentration on a weapon to the exclusion of other details of a crime
• the weapon captures the visual attention of the witness and thereby distracts witness attention from other important features of the visual scene such as the face of the perpetrator

Question 5

how does stress affect the reliability of eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 5

• our ability to recall accurate information becomes impaired as we experience iincreased stress

Question 6

how can attention affect the reliability of eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 6

• the level of attention can impact on facial encoding and eyewitness identification
• when people witness an event under divided attention, they show both poorer memory for event details and are more susceptible to misinformation

Question 7

how does post event information affect the reliability of eyewtiness testimonies?

Answer 7

• any information that arrives after an even may impact an eyewitnesss’ memory of what happened
• witnesses may encounter additional information from the media, other witnesses, lawyers or the police
• exposure to such information may distort aa witnesses’ account