eye witness testimony

Question 1

What is eye witness testimony (EWT)

Answer 1

EWT is an account given by people of an event they have witnessed , it is the ability of people to remember the details of events, such as accidents and crimes, which they have observed.

Question 2

What effects the accuracy of EWT?

Answer 2

EWT can be effected by misleading information, such as leading questions and misleading information usually given in post event discussions.

Misleading information-Incorrect information given to the witness usually after the event.

Leading question-A question that suggests to the witness what answer is desired, or leads them to a certain answer due to phrasing.

Question 3

Studies into leading questions and misleading information.

Answer 3

Loftus and Palmer did two studies into leading questions.
The first study (in 1974) has 45 students as participants and they where shown a video of a car accident. They where all asked a question about the speed of the cars on impact such as “how fast the cars where going when they hit each other?”. This was the question asked to one group and the other groups where asked the same question with different verbs replacing hit , the verbs where smashed, bumped, collided and contacted. The results show that the verb used effects the estimated speed with the verb contacted having the lowest average speed of 31.8mph while smashed had the highest of 40.5mph. This showed that the questions where leading and effected the EWT.

Their second study (also in 1974) aimed to see if leading questions could effect the memory of the event. The participants where shown a clip of the crash and asked the same question about what they saw with the same different verbs. The word smashed lead to the highest reports of broken glass the other verbs even though there was no broken glass. This shows the critical verb altered memory of the discussion.

Gabbert et al (2003) , this was a study into misleading information in the form of a post event discussion. The participants where put in pairs and watched videos of a crime from different views. Before they where asked what they saw the got to discuss what they saw with their partners. 71% of the participants mentioned details did not see but where in their partners video, in the control group this was 0%. This shows witnesses will absorb information from other witnesses due to memory contamination or conformity.

Question 4

Strengths of research into misleading information and leading questions.

Answer 4

• ) Most of the studies where lab studies so they are easier to replicate and to test to see if they are valid, extraneous variables are controlled for so high internal validity.
• )The studies have important applications to real life as it can help police questioning witnesses. The studies shows the danger of misleading information and leading questions which could help police and legal systems.

Question 5

weaknesses of research into misleading information and leading questions.

Answer 5

• )Watching a video and seeing the event are very different things. Watching the video wont create anxiety which studies show can increase accuracy of recall. In real life EWT is important, in the studies it is not so the participants are less motivated to be accurate, this all means that the research isn’t very ecologically valid and real life recall could be less affected by misleading information and leading questions.
• ) Lab studies into EWT can lead to demand characteristics
• ) Yuille and Cutshall (1986) interviewed 13 witnesses of real crime 5 months after the event and they asked them to leading questions but recall was still found to be accurate suggesting EWT is more accurate in real life and is less effected by leading questions.
• ) Many of Loftus’s experiments used students which are not a representative group as they usually have better memories for example.

Question 6

Anxiety and EWT

Answer 6

Anxiety has sting emotional and physical effects on eye witnesses, according to Yerkes and Dodson the relationship between anxiety and recall accuracy is reverse u shape with a medium anxiety amount having the highest recall accuracy.

Question 7

Weapon focus effect

Answer 7

high anxiety can be created by the weapon focus effect, this is when during a crime the eye witnesses sees a weapon and they focus on that weapon increasing their anxiety.

One study into its effect on EWT was the Johnson and Scot study, Participants sat outside a laboratory and heard one of two situations.
A friendly conversation and a man emerging afterwards with a pen and grease on his hands.
Or an argument and a man emerging with a knife and blood on the knife.
The high anxiety situation had a 33% recall rate while the low anxiety situation had a 49% recall rate , this shows the anxiety created by the weapon focus effect had a negative effect on EWT.
However other studies have shown high anxiety helps EWT such a study in which 58 eyewitnesses to a bank robbery where interviewed and the victims where generally more accurate then the observers.

Question 8

weaknesses of anxiety and EWT

Answer 8

• ) Weapon focus may not create anxiety, Pickel (1998) suggests the reduced accuracy is due to surpise. In his study he arranged for 4 situations, (high anxiety-low surprise, high anxiety-high surprise, low anxiety-low surprise, low anxiety-high surprise). The found that surprise lead to less accurate recall not anxiety as both the high surprise situations where the least accurate.
• ) Field studies often lack control, such as when looking at real crime confounding variables could effect results. Such as distance to the crime etc. This makes it harder to make conclusions of anxieties relationship with EWT.
• )The research has ethical issues as creating anxiety doesn’t protect participants from harm as it can cause stress, natural studies are more ethical however as we do not cause the anxiety.
• )The Yerkes Dodson Law explanation is to simplistic as anxiety is hard to measure or define and can have many elements: cognitive, emotional etc.
• ) Personality charcaertsics instead of anxiety could be causing changes in the accuracy of EWT, with a study showing that highly anxious people where less accurate when their stress levels increased as opposed to calmer people. This suggests that anxiety does not effect recall in everyone the same way.

Question 9

The cognitive interview

Answer 9

The cognitive interview was created by Fisher and Geiselman et al. It aims to increase the accuracy of witness recall by providing them with cues to help retrieval. The cognitive interview has 4 principles.

1) Context reinstatement, this is when the interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate the physical and physiological environment of the event. This helps to trigger memory recall based on the principle of context dependent and state dependent recall.
2) report everything, by reporting every detail whether irrelevant or not helps aid the recall of more important detail and this will help stop interruption which helps recall as memories are interconnected and act as cues to each other.
3) Recall in changed order, the interviewer could ask the interviewee to go through the event from a different timeline such as reverse order. Our recollections are effected by schema but changing the recall order can stop this schema effecting your recall and it can trigger memories as they can recall more of what happens at the end as well.
4) Recall from changed perspective, by asking them to imagine the events from other perspectives ,such as from another witnesses perspective, schemas can be disrupted.

Question 10

Enhanced cognitive interview

Answer 10

Fisher (1987) created the enhanced CI which includes the following principles.

• )should actively listen
• )ask open ended questions
• )pause after each response
• )encourage the use of imagery
• )Avoid interruption
• ) Adapt language to suit the witness
• )Avoid judgmental comments
• )minimize distractions

Question 11

strengths of the cognitive interview

Answer 11

-) Research support such as Gieselman’s study supports the cognitive interviews effectiveness. In the study those under the cognitive interview generated more information but also more accurate information.
A meta analysis of 53 studies found that on average an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information made by the CI compared to normal interview techniques. It was also found by Milne and Bull that using multiple aspects of the CI generated better recall then just using one aspect.

Question 12

weaknessess of the cognitive interview

Answer 12

• ) The CI is more time consuming which is problematic if working under time constraints and the witness needs to be relaxed.
• )the CI requires the interviewer receive large amounts of training in CI for it to be effective.
• )A lot of studies the support CI are lab studies which may not be ecologically valid.
• ) It has been less effective improving recall in children as shown by many different studies such as Gieselman finding that the technique decreased the accuracy in recall for children under 6.