Eye-witness Testimony Flashcards
What is a EWT?
Individuals that have witnessed a crime.
How can anxiety affect EWT?
When you see a crime anxiety levels rise at the same time of the encoding stage with can effect accuracy of memory.
What is the Yerkes Dodson Law?
Performance is related to arousal
Sometimes if arousal is too high (anxiety) performance drops off again
What is the Weapon Focus Phenomenon?
When a weapon is involved in a crime accuracy of memory can be affected bc the individual is focusing on the weapon.
Findings of Loftus’ Weapon Focus Phenomenon experiment.
Pen =49% accurate recall
Knife=33% accurate recall
Results aren’t that different so can’t use this as a full explanation.
What did Yuille and Cutshall do?
Real life event
13 witnesses of a shooting in Canada
Accurate accounts several months after the event
Misleading questions had no affect
What did Loftus and Palmer do?
1.
45 students a short video clip
5gps or 9
“How fast were the cars going when they …….. each other?”
The word smashed had the highest speed
2.
Asked similar things but a week later they were asked if there was broken glass
There was non but the verb made people think otherwise
Who came up with the cognitive interview?
Geiselman et al, 1985
What are the four parts of a cognitive interview?
Context reinstatement = recall the setting of a specific time with as much detail as possible such as weather, mood etc.
Report everything = report everything you can remember even if it seems irrelevant.
Recall in reverse order = starting wit the scene that seems most memorable and work backwards to pick up anything missed.
Recall from changed perspective = describe it from someone else perspective that was also there.
