Eye-witness Testimony

Question 1

Eye-witness testimony

Answer 1

The ability of people to remember the details of events, such as accidents or crimes, which they themselves have observed

Question 2

Leading questions

Answer 2

A question which, because of the way it is phrased, suggests a certain answer

Question 3

Post-event discussion (PED)

Answer 3

• This occurs when there is more than one witness to an event
• Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with a co-witness or other people, which may influence the accuracy of each witness’s recall of the event

Question 4

Loftus and Palmer experiment 1- leading questions

Answer 4

• 45 student participant were shown short video clips
• They were then split into 5 groups, with participants in each one
• All the participants were asked about ‘how fast were the cars going when they _______ each other’
• Each group was given a different verb to fill in the blank e.g hit, contacted, smashed
• How the questions was phrased heavily influenced the participants’ speed estimates
• When smashed was used, mean estimate was 40.8, compared to 31.8 when contacted was used

Question 5

Loftus and Palmer experiment 2- leading questions

Answer 5

• 150 students were shown a short film that showed a multi-vehicle car accident
• They were then split into 3 groups
• One group was asked ‘how fast were the cars going when they hit each other
• Another group was asked ‘how fast were the cars going when they smashed each other’
• The third group was not asked about the vehicle speed
• One week later, all participants returned and were asked ‘did you see any broken glass’ despite there being no broken glass in the film
• The results showed that the verb used in the original question influenced whether the participant thought they had seen broken glass
• 32% said they did in the ‘smashed’ group, compared to only 14% in the ‘hit’ group

Question 6

Garbbert et al (2003)- PED

Answer 6

• He investigated the effect of post-event discussion on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
• The sample consisted of 60 students from University of Aberdeen and 60 older adults recruited from a local community
• They all watched a video of a girl stealing money from a wallet. The participants were then told to discuss the crime in co-witness groups. They were told they had seen the same video, but they had in fact seen it from different perspectives
• They were then asked to complete a questionnaire to test memory of the event. He found that 71% of participants in the co-witness group recalled information they had not actually seen
• These results highlight the issue of post-event discussion and the powerful effect this can have on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Question 7

Evaluation of research into EWT

Answer 7

• Useful real-life applications: This is a large strength of research into misleading questions, where the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious. For example, that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses
• The tasks are artificial: watching clips of a crime is different from experiencing a real incident, such as the lack of stress e.g Yuille and Cutshall. This is a limitation as it tells us very little about how leading questions affect EWT in cases of real events
• Individual differences: There is evidence that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports. However, all age groups were more accurate when identifying people of their own age group (own age bias). Research often uses younger people as the target, which may lead to some age groups appearing less accurate but this is not true