Eye Witness Testimony

Question 1

What is Eye Witness Testimony (EWT)

Answer 1

Eye Witness Testimony (EWT) is a legal term that refers to an account that a witness who has seen a crime might offer.

Question 2

Can you identify 3 reasons why the accuracy of EWT might be questionable?

Answer 2

• Stress
• Anxiety
• Weapon focus
• Misleading information
• Time
• Reconstructive memory (remembering something that didn’t actually happen)

Question 3

Loftus and Palmer were interested in which key aspect of false EWT?

Answer 3

Misleading information.

Question 4

Key Study - Loftus and Palmer (1974) Experiment 1. What were the aims of the study?

Answer 4

To investigate the impact of misleading information (questions) on the accuracy of EWT.

Question 5

Key Study - Loftus and Palmer (1974) Experiment 1. What were the procedures/methods of the study. Try to identify at least 3 points of detail.

Answer 5

• 45 students
• each shown 7 films of car accidents where a collision took place
• 4 films were staged crashes so that the researchers knew the speeds (20, 2 x 30 and 40 mph), the other 3 were real crashes where the speed was uncertain
• Questionnaire was given after the film with one critical question about the speed of the car.
• 5 different conditions
• Each group of participants only experienced 1 condition each where in the critical question a different verb was used in the question - ‘How fast do you think the cars were travelling when they **** into each other?’)

Question 6

Key Study - Loftus and Palmer (1974) Experiment 1 Procedures.
What were the 5 verbs used in the question about the speed of the cars ‘‘How fast were the cars going when they *** into each other?’

Answer 6

Smashed
Collided
Bumped
Hit
Contacted

Question 7

Key Study - Loftus and Palmer (1974) Experiment 1 Findings.

What were the average estimated speeds given for each verb based condition?

Answer 7

Smashed - 40.8mph
Collided - 39.3mph
Bumped - 38.1mph
Hit - 34.0mph
Contacted - 31.8mph

Question 8

Key Study - Loftus and Palmer (1974) Experiment 1. What were the conclusions of the study?

Answer 8

That the phrasing of the critical question had a clear affect on witnesses estimation of the speed of the cars. This suggested that EWT was subject to misleading information. This could mean that EWT in court was potentially flawed or at least open to manipulation through providing misleading information when witnesses were being questioned.

Question 9

Summarise Loftus and Palmer’s procedures for the second experiment (1974) where ‘smashed glass’ was involved.

Answer 9

• New set of participants (150) watched a 1 minute film about a car accident under 3 conditions. There was no broken glass in the film.
• Same critical question (How fast do you think the cars were travelling when they **** into each other?) as the first experiment for 2 of the groups.
  Group 1 - smashed
  Group 2 - hit
  Group 3 were a control group who had no question later on about speed.
• One week later a questionnaire with 10 questions including the critical one. They were also asked ‘Did you see any broken glass?”

Question 10

What were the finding of Loftus and Palmer’s procedures for the second experiment (1974) where ‘smashed glass’ was involved.

Answer 10

The group with “smashed” as the verb in the question were twice as likely to report broken glass.
Smashed - 16 out of 50 said yes
Hit - only 7 out of 50 said yes
Control group - 6 out of 50.

Question 11

Both of Loftus and Palmers studies about car crashes were similar. What were the STRENGTHS of the studies?

Answer 11

• Lab experiments under very controlled conditions. Same film, same questionnaires etc
• This means that the study could be replicated and the reliability tested
• The yes/no regarding the broken glass in the second study produced objective and quantitative data which didn’t require interpretation

Question 12

Both of Loftus and Palmers studies about car crashes were similar. What were the WEAKNESSES of the studies?

Answer 12

• Lack of real life validity as the students were unlikely to be under the same emotion strain as a real witness. This may have affected responses and even concentration during the films.
• Results are difficult to generalise to the whole population as the participants were all students
• There may have been demand characteristics due to the students trying to guess what the researchers were looking for in the study.

Question 13

In 1978 Loftus and Palmer showed events, via slides, leading upto a car accident involving a red Datsun car where ‘Stop’ or ‘Yield’ (give way) signs were seen. Can you add any more detail to the procedures?

Answer 13

Group 1 were shown the Datsun approaching a stop sign
Group 2 were shown the Datsun approaching a yield sign.
They then used a questionnaire that either had;
a) consistent questions regarding whether or not another car had pass as the Datsun came to the stop/yield sign (if the slides showed a stop sign, the questions asked about a stop sign) or
b) inconsistent (if the slides showed a stop sign, the questions asked about a yield sign and vice versa).

Participants were then showed the slides again in a RANDOM order and in pairs. Participants had to identify which of the pair were in the original sequence.

Question 14

In 1978 Loftus and Palmer showed events, via slides, leading upto a car accident involving a red Datsun car where ‘Stop’ or ‘Yield’ (give way) signs were seen. What did they find?

Answer 14

Where CONSISTENT questions were used 75% identified the correct slides

Where INCONSISTENT questions were used only 41% of participants identified the correct slides.

Question 15

In 1978 Loftus and Palmer showed events, via slides, leading upto a car accident involving a red Datsun car where ‘Stop’ or ‘Yield’ (give way) signs were seen. What were their conclusions?

Answer 15

They concluded that EWT was unreliable and that recall of event was subject to inaccuracies.

Question 16

Evaluation of Loftus and Palmer

Yuille and Cutshall (1986) disagreed with Loftus and Palmer about the reliability of EWT. How did their study show evidence that EWT IS reliable.

Answer 16

They interviewed 13 people who had witness a REAL robbery 4 months previous to the interview and included 2 misleading questions.

The EWT was still accurate.

This suggested that real life events may provide more accurate EWT than lab based experiments.

Question 17

Evaluation of Loftus and Palmer

Bekerian and Bowers (1983) replicated the 1978 Red Datsun study. Did they do anything differently?

Answer 17

On the second showing of the slides they showed them in the correct order rather than randomly as Loftus and Palmer had done.

The retrieval (identification) of the correct slides was much better.

This suggested that misleading information affects retrieval but not necessarily memory storage.

Question 18

Anxiety can have an impact on the accuracy of EWT but study evidence is mixed. Can you identify any findings of research about anxiety and the impact on accuracy of EWT?

Answer 18

Christianson and Hubinette (1993) investigated witness to real bank robberies and found those who had been threatened recalled more accurately.

Deffenbacher et al (2004) carried out a meta analysis of 18 studies and found that high levels of stress negatively affected recall accuracy.

Question 19

Why might the nature of anxiety and arousal be difficult to investigate in relation to EWT?

Answer 19

People respond to anxiety in different ways and the inverted U theory of arousal suggested that low to moderate anxiety can increase focus and concentration but when you pass an optimum level of arousal your performance in cognitive skills (such as memory) is negatively affected.

Question 20

What is the ‘Weapon Focus’ effect?

Answer 20

It suggests that when a weapon is present in a crime there is less focus on other matters such as faces, clothes, timings etc. Attention is drawn to the weapon.

Question 21

Johnson and Scott investigated the Weapon Focus effect on the accuracy of EWT. What, briefly, were their procedures, findings and conclusion ?

Answer 21

-participants overheard a discussion in a nearby room and then a man emerged
Condition 1 - the man emerged holding a pen with grease on his hand
Condition 2 - the conversation was more heated and the man emerged with a paper knife covered in fake blood

Findings -
In condition 1 - 49% accurately identified the man from 50 photos
In condition 2 - 33% accurately identified the man

Conclusion - the weapon distracted attention and therefore might explain poor recall in violent crimes.

Question 22

Loftus et al (1987) investigated the weapon focus effect. How? What did they find?

Answer 22

They monitored eye movement patterns and found that attention WAS physically drawn to the weapon.

Question 23

AGE could have an effect on the accuracy of EWT. What do the findings of some of the study evidence suggest?

Answer 23

Parker and Carranza (1989) found that Primary age children were better than adults but not as good as college students when identifying the criminal from a slide sequence of a mock crime.
Yarney (1993) found that that there was no significant differences between age groups when trying to identify a stranger who they had spoken to 2 minutes previously in the street.
Memon et al (2003) studied the accuracy of young (16-33) and older (60-82) eye witnesses. There was no difference in immediate recall but the younger age group were better when the identification task was delayed for a week.

Question 24

Own Age Bias. What is it?

Answer 24

It suggests that we are better at remembering those of a similar age to ourselves. Supporting evidence is Anastasi and Rhodes (2006).

‘Differential experience hypothesis’ suggests that we are better and recalling people who we are similar to based on our experience and is seen in age and race-bias studies where we recall better when the people are similar as us. i.e.. afro-caribbean people recognise other afro-caribbean people better than europeans.