Eyewitness Testimony. Flashcards
what is leading questions?
wording of a question has no effect on memory of event but it influences the answer given.
what is post-event discussion?
when co-witnesses of a situation or crime, mix misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories. this is because witnesses go along with each other to win social approval as believe other witness right(nsi and isi)
what did loftus and palmer do and what did they find(leading questions)?
they had 45 participants who watched a video of a car accident and where asked the question how fast did the car smash/hit/collide/bump/contacted?
verb contacted had answer of 31.8mph and smashed had mean 40.5mph. this proves the effect of leading questions on EWT as smash suggested a faster speed
what did gabbert et al find and do? post-event discussion
paired participants watch a video of a crime but they could see differet parts of the video so not same. they discussed what they had seen and then asked to recall it. 71% mistatkenly recalled events that they did not see but picked up in post-event discussion. in control group with no discussion, no errors.
what is a limitation of loftus and palmer study?
they used artificial materials, this is because they watched clips of an accident which is different to experiencing a real accident. yuille and cutshall found witnesses of a real traumatic armed robery had good recall after 4 months. this shows using artificial tasks tells us little how leading q affect EWT.
what is a strength of research into misleading information?
it has real life applications. it has led to important practical uses for police officers because of consequences of inaccurate EWT is serious. loftus claimed that leading quetions can have distorting influence on memory and so pollice officers have to be careful about how they phrase questions with witnesses. this can lead to an important difference to lives.
what is another limitation of lab studies of EWT?
they suffer from demand characteristics. research participants will want to be helpful and so when asked question and don’t know answer more likely to say yes than no. this is because it is seen as a more helpful answer. this means that it challenges the validity of the study as studies want to measure accuracy of EWT but the answers thy give may not reflect their real memory.
what did the study about anxiety from johnson and scott do and say?
participants sat in a waiting room believing they were apart of a lab study. there were 2 conditions:
low-anxiety condition- hear a argument and man walk in with pen and greasy hands
high-anxiety condition- argument accompanied with sound of shattering glass, man walk in with blood covered knife. asked to pick man from set of 50.
49% in low-anxiety-identified him
high anxiety- 33%
tunnel theory suggest witness attention on weapon, source of danger.
anxiety have negative effect
what did yuille and cutshall do and find out?
real life crime, shop owner shot a thief dead. 13 witnesses in the study.
asked 4-5 months after crime. acount compared to police interview at the time.
they rated how stressed felt during the accident,
very accurate and little difference to police interview, little change.
those with highest stress- most accurate.
what is the inverted u theory(yerkes and dodson)?
argue that their is an optium stress and performance level and performance increase with stress till a certain point where will decrease.
what is a limitation of johnson and scott’s study?
the study may test participants surprise and not anxiety as when a person sees a weapon may be more surprised than scared, as pickel used scissors,handgun and raw item in a hairdressing salon. the EWT accuracy was poorer for high unusualness such as chicken and gun. so the weapon focus is due to unusualness rather than anxiety and so does not tell the effects of anxiety on EWT.
what is a limitation of yuille and cutshall?
they have a lack of control of variables as real-life witnesses were interviewed months after the event. this means things can happen that researcher can’t control, for example they may discuss it with other or read accounts in media ad so post-event discussion may influence their memory. these extraneous variables can lead to inaccuracy of recall not anxiety.
what is another limitation of EWT for anxiety?
inverted u explanantion is limited as it is too simplistic. this is because anxiety is difficult to operationalise and has many elements such as cognitive, behavioural ,emotional etc. the inverted u assumes one is linked to poor performance and so fails to account for other factors, eg effect of emotional experience of witnessing a crime.
