Eye-witness Testimony Flashcards
eyewitness testimony
involves recalling details of personally observed events, like accidents or crimes
What is misleading information?
Misleading information is where incorrect information is given to the eyewitness usually after the event. It can take many forms including leading questions and post event discussion between witnesses.
What are two factors of misleading information affecting EWT?
- Leading Questions,
- Post-Event Discussion.
What are leading questions? (EWT)
- example
- a leading question suggests a particular answer due to its phrasing.
e.g “What colour was the woman’s coat?” implies the woman was wearing a coat, potentially influencing the witness’s response.
A better alternative is an open-ended question like, “Was the woman wearing a coat?” to avoid introducing assumptions and encourage unbiased responses.
response bias (leading questions)
occurs when the wording of a question has no enduring effect on the eye-witnesses memory of an event, but influences the kind of answers they give
substitution explanation (leading questions)
occurs when the wording of a question distorts memory
Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) study (1) on EWT recall in support of the response bias explanation?
- procedure
estimates of speed based on changing verb in the critical questions
INDEPENDENT GROUPS
- 45 American students watched a film of a car crash and were asked questions, including a critical one about speed.
- the critical question varied with verbs like ‘smashed,’ ‘collided,’ ‘bumped,’ or ‘contacted’ instead of ‘hit,’ influencing speed estimates.
Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) study (1) on EWT recall in support of the response bias explanation?
- findings
- Participants given the word ‘smashed’ estimated the highest speed (an average of 41mph)
- Those given the word ‘contacted’ gave the lowest estimate (an average of 32mph)
Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) study (1) on EWT recall in support of the response bias explanation?
- conclusion
The wording of the question influences the kind of answers given, shown in estimates of speed related to certain verbs, where using “smashed” as descriptor influenced a faster estimate.
Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) study (2) on EWT recall in support of the substitution explanation?
- procedure
tested leading questions and memory alteration.
INDEPENDENT GROUPS
- groups received different speed-related verbs: ‘smashed,’ ‘hit,’ or none (control group).
- a week later, participants were asked about broken glass presence (none in reality).
Recorded the number of participants who falsely recalled broken glass based on the initial verb suggestion.
Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) study (2) on EWT recall in support of the substitution explanation?
- findings
Participants who originally heard ‘smash’ were twice as likely to recall the false memory of the broken glass than the other conditions.
Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) study (2) on EWT recall in support of the substitution explanation?
- conclusion
The wording of a question interferes with the memory, this is seen with the use of the word ‘smashed’ distorting the participants memory of the event, leading to a false memory of broken glass.
What is post-event discussion? (EWT)
- when witnesses discuss a crime, leading to memory contamination.
-> conversations can mix (mis)information from other witnesses, impacting individual memories.
conformity effect (impact of post event discussion)
where eye-witnesses go along with other eye-witness testimonies either for social approval or because they believe them to be correct
source monitoring/confusion/memory contamination (impact of post event discussion)
when co-witnesses discuss a crime, they mix (misinformation) from other witnesses with their own memories so their original memories become distorted, because witnesses confuse what they actually saw with what they have subsequently heard
Gabbert et al’s (2003) study on EWT recall in support of the conformity effect?
- findings
- 71% of participants in Gabbert et al.’s study wrongly recalled details from the video due to discussion, while the control group had 0% error.
Gabbert et al’s (2003) study on EWT recall in support of the conformity effect?
- procedure
- showed participants a crime video
- pairs of participants watched different perspectives of the same crime, with each having unique information.
Participants discussed what they saw, including elements only visible to one partner - individual recall tests followed the discussion phase.
Gabbert et al’s (2003) study on EWT recall in support of the conformity effect?
- conclusion
Gabbert et al. concluded witnesses conform in memory, seeking social approval or assuming others are correct, terming it ‘memory conformity.’
What is a strength of misleading information affecting accuracy of EWT?
✓ research into misleading information has real-life applications
P: A strength is that research into misleading information has real-life applications
E: The research has led to important practical applications for police officers because the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious.
A: Loftus believes that leading questions can have a huge distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.
L: Such research has led psychologists to turn their attention to finding ways to improve the accuracy of EWT. For example, the cognitive interview was developed to try to increase the accuracy of witnesses’ recall of events during police questioning.
What is a limitation of misleading information affecting accuracy of EWT?
✘ Loftus and Palmer’s research relies on artificial materials.
P: A limitation of Loftus and Palmer’s research is that it relies on artificial materials.
E: Participants watched film clips of accidents which is a very different to experience from witnessing a real accident.
* Watching a mock accident is much less stressful than watching a real accident which can impact on accuracy of memory.
A: Yuille and Cutshall actually found that witness of a traumatic real armed robbery had very accurate recall after 4 months
* This is a limitation as the findings using such artificial tasks may tell us little about how leading questions affect EWT in the real world in terms of accidents and crimes.
What is a limitation of misleading information affecting accuracy of EWT?
✘ Lab studies of EWT suffer from Demand Characteristics
P: A limitation is that lab studies of EWT suffer from demand characteristics.
E: Participants usually do not want to let the researcher down, and want to appear helpful and attentive. So when they are asked a question they don’t know the answer to, they guess, especially if it is a yes/no question.
A: For example, if you were taking part in a study and were asked ‘Did you see a blue car?’ - you may answer ‘yes’, even though you know you didn’t see one, as this is a more helpful response.
L: This limits the accuracy of EWT and the validity of answers provided.
What is a limitation of misleading information affecting accuracy of EWT?
✘ Many EWT research studies lack external validity
P: A further limitation is that many EWT research studies lack external validity
E: Foster et al (1994) point out that what you remember as an eyewitness can have important consequences in the real world, but the same is not true for research studies.
A: Real eyewitnesses search their memory with more effort because their testimony may lead to a successful conviction or wrongful if inaccurate. This is not the case in research studies
L: Therefore, EWT accuracy may be greater in the real world because of the seriousness with which eyewitnesses undertake their role.
What is anxiety as a factor affecting the accuracy of EWT?
- an unpleasant state of emotional and physical arousal
- the emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension. Physical changes include increased heart rate and sweatiness.
Foster et al (1994)
Found that if participants thought they were watching a real-life robbery and also thought that their responses would influence the trial, their identification of a robber was more accurate.
What are 4 explanations for the relationship between EWT and anxiety?
- The weapon focus effect,
- The tunnel theory of memory,
- The fight or flight response,
- The Yerkes-Dodson inverted-U hypothesis.
It is not clear from the research evidence whether anxiety makes eyewitness recall better or worse:
- What are explanations where anxiety has a negative effect on recall?
- The weapon focus effect,
- The tunnel theory of memory.
It is not clear from the research evidence whether anxiety makes eyewitness recall better or worse:
- What is an explanation where anxiety has a positive effect on recall?
- The fight or flight response
It is not clear from the research evidence whether anxiety makes eyewitness recall better or worse:
- What is an explanation that accounts for contradictory findings on anxiety’s effect on recall?
- The Yerkes-Dodson inverted-U hypothesis
What is the weapon focus effect?
- How does it explain the relationship between EWT and anxiety?
- The ‘weapon focus’ effect is where witnesses to violent crimes focus on the weapon used, rather than the culprit’s face, negatively affecting their ability to to recall important details such as face recognition.
- Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us from paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse.
Johnson and Scott’s (1976) study in support of the weapon focus effect?
- procedure
LAB EXPERIMENT
- Participants waited in a room, exposed to different anxiety conditions:
Low anxiety: Overheard a normal discussion and observed a man with a pen and grease on his hands.
High anxiety: Overheard a heated discussion and saw a man with a blood-covered paper knife.
Later, participants were asked to identify the man from a set of photographs.
Johnson and Scott’s (1976) study in support of the weapon focus effect?
- findings
Mean accuracy was 49% in identifying the man in the low anxiety condition (pen), compared with 33% accuracy in the high anxiety condition (knife).
Johnson and Scott’s (1976) study in support of the weapon focus effect?
- conclusion
This research supports the weapon focus effect as the anxiety caused by seeing the knife narrowed the focus of attention to the weapon (the knife was a source of danger) and took attention away from the face of the man.
What is the tunnel theory of memory?
- How does it explain the relationship between EWT and anxiety?
- Stress causes attention to narrow, leading to a phenomenon known as tunnel vision.
- explains weapon focus, suggesting that in stressful situations, attention becomes fixated on the weapon due to anxiety, resulting in less accurate eyewitness testimony for everything except the most relevant details.
What is the flight or fight response?
- How does it explain the relationship between EWT and anxiety?
- an alternative viewpoint suggests that high anxiety leads to more enduring memories.
- witnessing a crime induces anxiety through physiological arousal, activating the fight-or-flight response.
-> this heightened arousal increases alertness and improves memory as individuals become more attuned to cues in the situation.
Yuille and Cutshall’s (1986) study in support of the fight or flight response?
- procedure
- conducted interviews with 13 witnesses of a real violent crime involving a shop owner shooting a thief
- interviews occurred four months post-event, comparing accounts with original police interviews.
- accuracy measured by the number of reported details in each account.
- witnesses also rated their stress levels during the event on a 7-point scale.
Yuille and Cutshall’s (1986) study in support of the fight or flight response?
- findings
- The witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and there was little difference in the accuracy after & months.
- Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (88% compared 75% in the least stressed group).
Yuille and Cutshall’s (1986) study in support of the fight or flight response?
- conclusion
- This research finding suggests that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall and could actually enhance the accuracy of memory.
- This evidence contradicts the findings of Johnson and Scott’s lab based experiment.
Describe the contradictory findings on anxiety’s effect on recall:
- evidence on anxiety’s impact on recall is contradictory.
Real-life situations, like Yuille and Cutshall’s study, suggest anxiety can enhance accuracy in eyewitness testimony. - in contrast, lab-based research, exemplified by Johnson and Scott (1976), indicates that anxiety induced by a weapon may decrease recall.
What is the Yerkes- Dodson inverted-U hypothesis?
- The Yerkes Dodson Law can account for inconsistent findings. Yerkes and Dodson argue that the relationship between emotional arousal and performance looks like an ‘inverted-U’.
- It explains why some research shows a negative relationship between anxiety and EWT whilst others show a positive relationship between them.
The inverted-U hypothesis?
- (uphill)- detrimental affect on recall
- (climax)- anxiety at optimum level for recall
- (downhill)- detrimental affect on recall
- Very low or very high levels of anxiety can have a detrimental affect on performance, so recall of the event will be poor.
- However, moderate levels anxiety may actually have a beneficial effect on performance and therefore, a more accurate recall.
What is a strength of anxiety as a factor affecting the accuracy of EWT?
✓ Real life studies such as Yuille and Cutshall’s have a higher degree of external validity than artificial lab based studies
P: strength of real life studies such as Yuille and Cutshall’s is that they have a higher degree of external validity than artificial lab based studies.
E: In Yuille and Cutshall’s study, participants had witnessed a real life crime. These ‘real’ events are more realistic than any in a lab as they are sudden, unexpected and have high levels of stress. This could account for the contradictory nature of search in which accuracy of EWT is higher in real life studies than in lab experiments.
A: As witnessing violent crime has been shown to have high anxiety content it could be argued that field studies provide the only real way to test the effects of anxiety on EWT accurately.
What is a limitation of anxiety as a factor affecting the accuracy of EWT?
✘ Johnson and Scott’s study weapon focus may test surprise rather than anxiety
P: A limitation of the study by Johnson and Scott on weapon focus is that it may test surprise rather than anxiety.
* Participants may focus on the weapon because they are surprised by what they see rather than because they are scared.
E: Pickel (1998) arranged for participants to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying either scissors, handgun, wallet or a whole raw chicken.
A: Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions (chicken and handgun) rather than just the high threat (scissors and handgun)
* This supports the view that weapon focus is related to surprise rather than anxiety and may mean that research into
L: EWT may tell us little about the effects of anxiety on EWT.
What is a limitation of anxiety as a factor affecting the accuracy of EWT?
✓ research support
Point – One strength of anxiety affecting eyewitness testimony (EWT) is evidence from real-life studies that support the idea that anxiety can enhance recall.
Evidence – Yuille & Cutshall (1986) studied witnesses of a real-life shooting. They found that participants who reported experiencing higher levels of stress had a more accurate recall (88%) compared to those with lower stress levels (75%).
Analysis – This suggests that, in real-life situations, anxiety may actually improve the accuracy of memory rather than hinder it. This challenges lab-based research that suggests anxiety negatively impacts recall and supports the idea that heightened emotional arousal can strengthen memory retention.
Link – Therefore, this real-world evidence strengthens the argument that anxiety can have a positive effect on EWT, particularly in high-stakes, real-life situations.
Counterpoint
P: A limitation of field studies is that they lack control of extraneous variables
E: Research usually involves real life eyewitnesses being interviewed sometime after the event. All sorts of things will have happened in the meantime that researchers have no control over.
* This may include discussions with other people about the event, accounts they may have read in the media, and so on which may effect their memory (i.e. post event discussions).
A: This is a limitation of field research because it is possible that these extraneous variables may be responsible for the (in) accuracy of recall, not anxiety, which leads to problems in establishing cause and effect.
What is a limitation of anxiety as a factor affecting the accuracy of EWT?
✘ there are ethical issues in this research area
P: Another limitation is that there are ethical issues in this research area.
E: Creating anxiety in participants is very risky. It is potentially risky because it may subject people to psychological harm purely for the purpose of research.
A: This is why real-life studies, such as Yuille and Cutshall’s are so beneficial as psychologists interview people who have already witnessed an event so there is no need to create a potentially stressful event.
* In Johnson and Scott’s study participants could have been highly distressed at the sight of the man with the knife.
L: This does not challenge the findings of their study but it does question the need for such research.
What is a limitation of anxiety as a factor affecting the accuracy of EWT?
✘ The inverted U explanation is limited because it is too simplistic
P: The inverted U explanation is limited because it is too simplistic
E: Anxiety is very difficult to define and measure accurately. One reason for this is that it has many elements - cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical.
A: But the inverted-U explanation assumes only one of these is linked to poor performance; physiological (physical) arousal.
L: The explanation fails to account for other factors: for example the effect of emotional experience of witnessing a crime (e.g. terror) on the accuracy of memory.
What are the problems with the standard police interview?
- standard police interviews often involve the interviewer dominating the conversation and posing specific forced-choice questions (e.g., about the perpetrator’s race).
- unconscious use of leading questions during interviews can contaminate the witness’s memory of the incident.
- problems with this technique include disrupting the natural memory-search process and reducing the efficiency of memory retrieval.
Why does the cognitive interview enhance recall?
- role of context reinstatement -> work on reconstructive memory
- use of context -> makes the event more meaningful
- better for recall of peripheral detail than central detail
What are the 4 main techniques used in the cognitive interview?
1) report everything,
2) reinstate the context,
3) reverse the order,
4) change perspective.
When is cognitive interview less useful?
with children, when there is increased time between event and recall
What is involved in “mental reinstatement of context”?
- trying to mentally recreate an image of the situation, including details of the environment, such as the weather conditions and the individual’s emotional state including their feelings at the time of the incident -> may all act as cues/triggers to recall
- The aim of this technique is to help people to retrieve memories that are there using appropriate contextual and emotional cues.
- based on research into context-dependent forgetting.
What is involved in “report everything”?
- the interviewer encourages the witness to report all details about the event, even though these details may seem to be unimportant -> may highlight something that has been ‘overlooked’
- this technique works on the basis that even seemingly trivial details can trigger important memories
What is involved in “change of order”?
- the witness is asked to recall the scene in a different chronological order, e.g. from the end to the beginning -> verifies accuracy
- the rationale behind this is that reversing the order prevents people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than what actually happened.
- It also prevents dishonesty as it is harder to produce a dishonest account in reverse
What is a strength of the cognitive interview?
✓ some elements of the full Cognitive Interview are useful
P: A strength is that some elements of the full Cognitive Interview are useful
E: Milne and Bull (2000) interviewed undergraduate students and children using just one component of the Cognitive Interview, and compared responses to a control group (standard police interview).
* They found that recall across each individual component was broadly similar and no different to the control group.
* However, they also found that a combination of ‘report everything and ‘reinstate the context’, produced better recall than any of the techniques individually.
A: This finding is a strength as it suggests that at least two of the techniques should be used to improve police interviewing of eyewitnesses even if the full Cognitive Interview isn’t used.
What is involved in “change of perspective”?
- trying to mentally recreate the situation from different points of view, e.g. describing what another witness present at the scene would have seen -> promotes more ‘holistic’ view of the event which may enhance recall
- this is again used to disrupt the effect of schemas (what we would expect to happen in that situation) from affecting accurate recall of the event.
What is the enhanced cognitive interview (CI) ?
- implementation of the cognitive interview revealed some officers lacked essential social skills, like interrupting witnesses.
- Fisher et al. (1987) addressed this by enhancing the cognitive interview with a focus on improving social dynamics.
- additional aspects include knowing when to establish or break eye contact, reducing witness anxiety, minimizing distractions, encouraging slow speech, and emphasizing the use of open-ended questions.
What is a strength of the cognitive interview?
✓ Kohnken et al’s (1999) support for the effectiveness of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI)
P: Another strength is support for the effectiveness of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI)
E: A meta analysis by Kohnken et al. (1999) combined data from 50 studies. The ECI consistently provided more correct information than the standard police interview.
A: This is a strength because studies such as this one indicate there are real practical benefits to the police of using the enhanced version of the cognitive interview in allowing the police a greater chance of catching and charging criminals, which is a benefit to society as a whole.
What is a limitation of the cognitive interview?
✘ using the Cognitive Interview in practice is too time consuming
P: A limitation of using the Cognitive Interview in practice is that it is too time consuming
E: The police have reported that they are reluctant to use the Cognitive Interview as it takes much more time to carry out than the standard police interview. For example, more time is needed to establish rapport with the witness and to provide time for them to relax.
* The Cognitive Interview also requires specialist training. However, many forces have not been able to provide any more than a few hours to do so.
A: This is a weakness of the technique as it means that it is unlikely that the ‘proper’ version of the Cognitive Interview is actually used, which might explain why police have not been that impressed by it and why its use has not been widespread.
What is a limitation of the cognitive interview?
✘ research may be unreliable because of variations of the CI
P: A limitation is that research may be unreliable because of variations of the Cognitive Interview.
E: Studies of effectiveness use slightly different techniques; different researchers may use variations of the Cognitive Interview or Enhanced Cognitive Interview and police forces evolve their own methods.
A: This means that it is difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the Cognitive Interview in general.
