Eye Witness Testimony & Cognitive Interview

Question 1

What is eye witness testimony

Answer 1

A legal term referring to the account someone gives when they’ve witnessed a crime

Question 2

What is an eye witness

Answer 2

• someone who has seen or witnessed a crime, usually present at the time of the incident
• they use their memory of the crime to give their testimony or a ‘reconstruction’ of the event

Question 3

Process of eye witness testimony

Answer 3

• witness encodes into LTM details of the event. Encoding May only be partial or distorted
• the witness retains the information for a period of time. Memories may be lost or modified during this time
• the witness retrieves the memory from storage

Question 4

Lofts and Palmer ( 1974) - procedures

Answer 4

• investigated leading questions
• used their own psychology students
• had to guess the speed of a car when it hit another one
• the verb was changed for each group

Question 5

Lotus and Palmer - evidence

Answer 5

• more aggressive verbs gave a guess from the students of a higher speed
• smashed = 40.8mph
• hit = 34mph

Question 6

Loftus and Palmer - conclusion

Answer 6

• EWT can be bias based on the question asked

Question 7

Loftus and Palmer - evaluation

Answer 7

• lacked population validity = no generalisation
• lab study = demand characteristics

Question 8

Labbert et al (2003) - procedures

Answer 8

• investigate post event discussion
• ppts all watched different angles of a girl stealing money
• control group and co-witness group
• p’s in co-witness group thought they had seen the same thing
• only 1 ppt had actually seen the girl stealing

Question 9

Labbert et al - evidence

Answer 9

• in questionnaire 71% recalled information they had not seen in cowitness group
• 60% said she was guilty

Question 10

Labbert et al - conclusion

Answer 10

EWT is effected by post event discussion

Question 11

Labbert et al - evaluation

Answer 11

• bad population validity
• lab study

Question 12

Who opposed Labbert et al’s study?

Answer 12

Yuile & Cutshalls

Question 13

Johnson & Scott (1976) - procedure

Answer 13

• investigate anxiety on recall due to weapon focus
• a man either walked with a pen covered in grease or a knife covered in blood after an appointment

Question 14

Johnson & Scott - evidence

Answer 14

• did a photo line up with 50 photos
• 44% of the low anxiety group identified him correctly
• 33% from high anxiety group identified him correctly

Question 15

Johnson & Scott - conclusion

Answer 15

• tunnel theory of memory says witness attention narrows to weapon as its anxiety source

Question 16

Johnson & Scott - evaluation

Answer 16

• lacks ecological validity = could have been anticipating something, affecting accuracy of judgement
• lacks ethicality = ppts were deceived about nature of the experiment

Question 17

Yuille & Cutshall (1986) - procedure

Answer 17

• investigate positive anxiety affects on EWT
• real life Canadian shooting
• accuracy determined by details in accounts
• carried out interviews 4 months after the incident and compared with initial ones

Question 18

Yuille & Cutshall - evidence

Answer 18

• little change in EWT, ppts with reported high stress levels were more accurate
• 80% accuracy for more stressed
• 75% accuracy for less stressed

Question 19

Yuille & Cutshall - conclusion

Answer 19

Leading questions have little effects

Question 20

Yuille & Cutshall - evaluation

Answer 20

• only 13 ppts therefore hard to generalise
• high validity = field experiment

Question 21

What is anxiety

Answer 21

An unpleasant emotional state where we fear that something bad is about to happen

Question 22

What is the theory called displaying anxiety levels and performance

Answer 22

The inverted U theory

Question 23

What does the inverted U theory show us

Answer 23

That anxiety can have both a positive and negative effect on someone’s ability to accurately recall EWT

Question 24

Anxiety as a negative key points

Answer 24

• prevents us from paying attention to important cues
• recall is worse
• hypervigilance
• effects of weapons is showing this