Eye Witness Testimony & Cognitive Interview Flashcards
What is eye witness testimony
A legal term referring to the account someone gives when they’ve witnessed a crime
What is an eye witness
- 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
Process of eye witness testimony
- 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
Lofts and Palmer ( 1974) - procedures
- 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
Lotus and Palmer - evidence
- more aggressive verbs gave a guess from the students of a higher speed
- smashed = 40.8mph
- hit = 34mph
Loftus and Palmer - conclusion
- EWT can be bias based on the question asked
Loftus and Palmer - evaluation
- lacked population validity = no generalisation
- lab study = demand characteristics
Labbert et al (2003) - procedures
- 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
Labbert et al - evidence
- in questionnaire 71% recalled information they had not seen in cowitness group
- 60% said she was guilty
Labbert et al - conclusion
EWT is effected by post event discussion
Labbert et al - evaluation
- bad population validity
- lab study
Who opposed Labbert et al’s study?
Yuile & Cutshalls
Johnson & Scott (1976) - procedure
- 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
Johnson & Scott - evidence
- 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
Johnson & Scott - conclusion
- tunnel theory of memory says witness attention narrows to weapon as its anxiety source
Johnson & Scott - evaluation
- lacks ecological validity = could have been anticipating something, affecting accuracy of judgement
- lacks ethicality = ppts were deceived about nature of the experiment
Yuille & Cutshall (1986) - procedure
- 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
Yuille & Cutshall - evidence
- little change in EWT, ppts with reported high stress levels were more accurate
- 80% accuracy for more stressed
- 75% accuracy for less stressed
Yuille & Cutshall - conclusion
Leading questions have little effects
Yuille & Cutshall - evaluation
- only 13 ppts therefore hard to generalise
- high validity = field experiment
What is anxiety
An unpleasant emotional state where we fear that something bad is about to happen
What is the theory called displaying anxiety levels and performance
The inverted U theory
What does the inverted U theory show us
That anxiety can have both a positive and negative effect on someone’s ability to accurately recall EWT
Anxiety as a negative key points
- prevents us from paying attention to important cues
- recall is worse
- hypervigilance
- effects of weapons is showing this
