Eye Witness Testimony Flashcards
Simons 1999
Change blindness - people do not notice as much as they think they do
Bartlett 1932
‘War of ghosts’ - memories can be affected by thoughts from LTM
What are schemas?
Basing expectations on observations made in previous experiences
What can schemas affect?
The accuracy of eye witness testimony
What are the four factors that affect the accuracy of eye witness testimony?
Anxiety
Age of witness
Leading questions
Post event discussion
What is anxiety?
An unpleasant emotional state where we are anticipating something bad about to happen
When was the Yerkes Dodson law?
1908
What does the Yerkes Dodson law suggest?
As arousal of anxiety increases, performance increases up to a certain level of anxiety.
If a person feels a higher level of anxiety, performance significantly decreases.
What was the alternative idea proposed by Freud?
Traumatic memories are repressed to protect the individual from emotional distress
What did Loftus et al. do?
Weapon focus effect
Bank robbery experiment?
Christianson and Hubinette (1993)
What was Christianson and Hubinette’s bank robbery experiment?
They found that people who were physicaly threatened by the robbers (thus feeling a higher level of anxiety) could recall more about what they looked like than the onlookers.
Who did a case study investigating how leading questions can affect the accuracy of EWT?
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
What did Loftus and Palmer do?
Showed 45 people 7 clips of accidents.
Split in to 5 groups of 9
Words: smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted (how fast)
What did Loftus and Palmer find?
When the verb was more emotive, the estimated speed was higher
