Eye Witness Testimony

Question 1

What factors impact eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

Stress, weapons, misleading questions, change blindness, cross race biases, exposure duration, use of a disguise.

Question 2

Who spoke about misleading questions?

Answer 2

Loftus & Palmer (1974)

Question 3

What was Loftus & Palmer (1974) study about?

Answer 3

Participants watched a multiple car accident then answered specific questions such as how fast were the cars going when they smashed into/hit/collided with/bumped/contracted each other?
After one week, they were asked if they saw broken glass

Question 4

What was the results to Loftus and Palmers study?

Answer 4

Speed estimates depended on the word used in the question
Highest for smashed- 40.8 mph
Lowest with contacted - 31.8 mph
When smashed was used participant were more likely to mistakenly claim they saw broken glass 32% compared to 14% for hit

Question 5

What were the conclusions made from the Loftus and Palmer’s study?

Answer 5

Memory can be systematically distorted by the way questions are phrased

Question 6

Was there any broken glass in Loftus and Palmers study?

Answer 6

No

Question 7

Who conducted the change blindness study?

Answer 7

Simons & Levin (1998)

Question 8

What was Simons and Levin (1998) study about?

Answer 8

A stranger asks participants for directions
After 10-15 second, people carrying a door pass in front of the participant blocking their view
During this time, the stranger is placed by a different person.
The two experimenters wore different clothing, were different heights and builds, had different hair cuts and had noticeably different voices.

Question 9

Who spoke about weapons effect?

Answer 9

Loftus et al (1987)

Question 10

What was the weapons effect study about?

Answer 10

Participants who saw a gun tended to focus on the gun and were less likely to identify offender and other details of the crime

Question 11

Who critiques the weapon effect?

Answer 11

Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

Question 12

What does Yuille and Cutshall (1986) say about the weapon effect?

Answer 12

21 witnesses saw a shooting and one person was killed, the weapon effect did not apply to them as it was found that witnesses had accurate memories despite the presence of the gun

Question 13

Who conducted a review on the link between stress and EWT reliability?

Answer 13

Deffenbacher et al (2004)

Question 14

What is eyewitness testimony?

Answer 14

refers to an account given by individuals of an event they have witnessed. Individuals may be required to give a description of perpetrators or other details of crime they have witnessed (McLeod, 2018)

Question 15

What was Deffenbacher et al (2004) review on?

Answer 15

The effects that stress can have the subsequent recall of the witness

Question 16

What was the results for change blindness study?

Answer 16

50% of participants failed to notice the switch.
Those who did notice the change were students roughly around the same age as the experimenters and those who failed to notice were older than the experimenters

Question 17

What is cross race identification?

Answer 17

The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty recognising and processing faces and facial expressions of members of a race or an ethnic group other than their own (Marsh, 2021)

Question 18

How many wrongful convictions have been overturned in the USA due to DNA evidence that were originally prosecuted based on cross race witness testimony misidentification?

Answer 18

36% (Scheck, Neufield, Dwyer, 2003)

Question 19

Who conducted the mirror effect through a meta analysis?

Answer 19

Meissner and Brigham (2001)

Question 20

What did Meissner and Brigham (2001) find?

Answer 20

People were 1.4 times more likely to identify a face from their own race.
People were 1.56 times more likely to mistakenly identify a race if it was not their race.

Question 21

What is exposure duration?

Answer 21

The length of time a witness must observe a face affects their subsequent capacity to recognise the face (MacLin et al 2001)

Question 22

What did Memon et al 2003 find about exposure duration?

Answer 22

Accurate identification was improved the longer the witnesses saw faces.
If witnesses saw faces for 45 seconds as opposed to 12 seconds, the recall of the event was significantly better.
Correct identification were made in 90% of trials when the face was seen for 45 seconds and only 33% when seen for 12 seconds.

Question 23

What does research show about the use of disguise for the eyewitness recall?

Answer 23

Participants are almost twice as likely to provide accurate identification of the culprit when there is no disguise than when there is a disguise put on.

Question 24

What does Loftus and Palmer (1974) say about memory?

Answer 24

Memory cannot simply be replace exactly how it occurred and memory can be purposely twisted