Eye witness testimony

Question 1

What 2 factors can lead to misleading information which effects EWT?

Answer 1

Leading questions

Post-event discussion

Question 2

What is a leading question?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Who conducted research into leading questions?

Answer 3

Loftus and Palmer

Question 4

Explain the procedure of Loftus and Palmer’s study.

Answer 4

• Participants (students) watched film clips of car accidents and were then given questions about the accident.
• In a leading question the student was asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling.
• 5 groups of participants, with the verb being changed in each critical question.
• Hit, bumped, contacted, collided and smashed.

Question 5

What were the findings of Loftus and Palmer’s study?

Answer 5

• The mean estimated speed was calculated for each group.
• The verb contacted = estimated speed of 31.8 mph.
• The verb smashed = estimated speed of 40.5 mph.
• Demonstrated that the verb used in the leading question determined the EWT.

Question 6

Why do leading questions effect EWT?

Answer 6

• Response-bias explanation: the leading question has no real effect on the individual’s memories but just influences how they decide to answer. When a participant gets the verb ‘smashed’, this encourages them to choose a higher speed estimate.
• Substitution explanation: the wording of the question actually changes the participants memory of the film clip. This was demonstrated as participants who heard the verb ‘smashed’ were more likely to recall broken glass in the clip (there was none) than someone who had heard ‘hit’.

Question 7

How does post-event discussion effect EWT?

Answer 7

When co-wtinesses to an event discuss it with each other, their EWT may become contaminated. This is because they combine information from others with their own memory.

Question 8

Who conducted research into the effect of post-event discussion on EWT?

Answer 8

Gabbert

Question 9

What was the procedure of Gabbert’s research?

Answer 9

• Gabbert studied participants in pairs, with each participant watching a video of the same crime but from different points of view.
• This meant that each participant could see elements of the event that others could not.
• Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall.

Question 10

What were the findings of Gabbert’s research?

Answer 10

• 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they had not seen in the video.
• The corresponding figure in the control group where there was no discussion was 0%.

Question 11

What did Gabbert et al. conclude?

Answer 11

That witnesses often go along with each other, either t win social approval or because they believe that the other witness is right and they are wrong. This phenomenon is called memory conformity.

Question 12

State a positive of the research into misleading information.

Answer 12

• Useful real-life application - Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.
• Can improve the way the legal system works and by appearing in court trials as expert witnesses.

Question 13

State 3 negatives of the research into misleading information.

Answer 13

• Artificial tasks: film clips are very different from witnessing a real life car accident as the clips lack the stress of the real environment and emotions can effect memory.
• Individual differences: evidence that older people are less accurate at recall than younger people but are better at recall when identifying someone their own age (own age bias). E.G. Anastasi and Rhodes found that people in age groups 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than people aged 55-78.
• Demand characteristics: participants don’t want to let the researcher down and want to appear helpful and attentive so if they don’t know the answer they make it up.

Question 14

State a positive of the research into misleading information.

Answer 14

• Useful real-life application - Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.
• Can improve the way the legal system works and by appearing in court trials as expert witnesses.

Question 15

How can anxiety have a negative effect on EWT?

Answer 15

Anxiety creates physiological arousal which prevents us from paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse.

Question 16

Define anxiety.

Answer 16

A state of emotional and physical arousal.

Question 17

How can anxiety have a negative effect on EWT?

Answer 17

Anxiety creates physiological arousal which prevents us from paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse.

Question 18

Who conducted a study on how anxiety can have a negative effect on EWT?

Answer 18

Johnson and Scott.

Question 19

What was the procedure of Johnson and Scott’s study?

Answer 19

• Led participants to believe that they were being involved in a lab study.
• While seated in a waiting room, participants heard an argument in the next room.
• In the ‘low anxiety’ condition a man walked through the waiting room carrying a pen with grease on his hands.
• In the second condition participants heard the same argument but this time accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man walked out the room, holding a paper knife that was covered in blood.

Question 20

What did Johnson and Scott find?

Answer 20

• The participants were then asked to identify the man out of 50 photos.
• 49% of participants who had seen the man carrying a pen could identify him.
• Only 33% of participants who had seen the man carrying the paper knife could identify him.

Question 21

How can anxiety have a positive effect on EWT?

Answer 21

The stress of witnessing a crime/accident creates anxiety through physiological arousal within the body. The fight-or-flight response is triggered which increases our alertness and improves our memory of the event because we become more aware of cues in the situation.

Question 22

What effect did Johnson and Scotts research find?

Answer 22

Weapon focus effect

Question 23

Who conducted research on the positive effect of anxiety on EWT?

Answer 23

Yuille and Cutshall

Question 24

What was the procedure of Yuille and Cutshall’s research?

Answer 24

• Conducted a study on a real-life theft which resulted in the thief getting shot dead.
• There were 21 witnesses, with 13 agreeing to take part in the study.
• The interviews were held 4-5 months after the incident, and these were compared to the police interviews made at the time of the shooting.
• Accuracy was determined by the number of details record in each account.
• The witnesses were also asked to rate how stressed they had felt at the time of the incident using a 7 point scale, and asked if they’d had any emotional problems since the event (e.g. sleeplessness).

Question 25

What did Yuille and Cutshall find?

Answer 25

• Witnesses were very accurate at recall and there was little change in accuracy after 5 months.
• Those participants who reported the highest stress levels were most accurate (88% compared to 75% for the less stressed group).

Question 26

What is the Yerkes-Dodson law?

Answer 26

States that performance will increase with stress, but only up to an optimal point, with performance decreasing if the individual is subject to further stress.

Question 27

State 4 criticisms of research into the effect of anxiety on EWT.

Answer 27

Weapon focus effect may not be relevant
Field studies may lack control
Ethical issues
The inverted-U theory is too simplistic

Question 28

Explain how weapon focus effect may not be relevant in effecting EWT.

Answer 28

• Johnson and Scott’s research may be testing surprise rather than anxiety.
• Pickel et al. conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand held items in a hairdressing salon video. Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (handgun and raw chicken).
• This suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety over the object.

Question 29

Explain how ‘field studies may lack control’ is a criticism of the research into how anxiety effects EWT.

Answer 29

• Post-event discussion

- Extraneous variables may have improved the accuracy of recall.

Question 30

What ethical issues are there in conducting research on how anxiety effects EWT?

Answer 30

• Creating anxiety among participants is potentially subjecting them to psychological harm.
• Shows why real-life studies are so beneficial - the event has already been witnessed so the psychologist does not need to create stress.

Question 31

How is the inverted-U theory too simplistic in explaining how anxiety effects EWT?

Answer 31

Anxiety is very difficult to define and measure accurately and has many elements: cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical.
The inverted-U theory only suggests that one of these is linked to poor performance - physiological arousal.

Question 32

What is the cognitive interview?

Answer 32

A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories.

Question 33

What are the four main techniques of the cognitive interview?

Answer 33

1. Report everything
2. Reinstate the context
3. Reverse the order
4. Change perspective

Question 34

What do the police officers do in the ‘report everything’ stage of the cognitive interview?

Answer 34

Eyewitnesses are encouraged to report every single detail of the event, even if it may seem irrelevant as they may trigger other memories.

Question 35

What do the police officers do in the ‘reinstate the context’ stage of the cognitive interview?

Answer 35

The witness should return to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagine the environment (e.g. what the weather was like that day).
This is related to context-dependent forgetting.

Question 36

What do the police officers do in the ‘reverse the order’ stage of the cognitive interview?

Answer 36

Events should be recorded in a different chronological order to the original sequence.
This is done to prevent the eyewitness reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events.
It also prevents dishonesty.

Question 37

What do the police officers do in the ‘change perspective’ stage of the cognitive interview?

Answer 37

Witnesses should recall the incident from other people’s perspectives.
This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall.

Question 38

What does ECI stand for?

Answer 38

Enhanced Cognitive Interview

Question 39

What is the ECI?

Answer 39

Additional elements of the cognitive interview to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction.
E.G. the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact with the witness.
It also includes reducing anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking them open-ended questions.

Question 40

State a criticism of the CI.

Answer 40

Time-consuming: takes a lot more time than a standard police interview, the CI also requires specialist training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours (Kebbell and Wagstaff).

Question 41

State 3 positives of the CI.

Answer 41

• Some elements may be more valuable than others: Milne and Bull found that each individual element was equally valuable but a combination of ‘report everything’ and ‘context reinstatement’ produced better recall than any of the other conditions. This is a strength as it suggests that at least these 2 elements should be used in standard police interview, even if a full CI is not conducted.
• Support for the ECI: a meta-analysis combined data from 50 studies and this showed that the ECI consistently provided more correct information than the standard interview used by the police.
• CI creates increase in incorrect information: Kohnken found that 81% increase in correct information but a 61% increase in incorrect information when the enhanced CI was used in comparison to a standard police interview.