Eyewitness Testimony

Question 1

Eyewitness

Answer 1

Someone who has seen or witnessed a crime, usually present at the time f the incident

Question 2

Eyewitness testimony

Answer 2

• the evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed a crime, with a view to identifying the perpetrator
• the eyewitness uses their memory of the crime to give their testimony or ‘reconstruction’ of what happened

Question 3

The Devlin committee (1975)

Answer 3

• analysed over 2000 identification parades in England and Wales during 1973
• 45% of these parades led to suspect in which the led to 82% of them being convicted
• in 350 cases, eyewitness identification was the only evidence of guilt and still 74% were convicted

Question 4

Innocence project (2015)

Answer 4

• eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contribution to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing
• playing a role in more than 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nation wide

Question 5

Leading question

Answer 5

A question that either by its form or content, suggests to the witness what answer is desired or leads the witness to the desired answer

Question 6

Lotus and Palmer (1974)
Aims

Answer 6

Experiment one- if the speed estimates would be influenced by the wording of the question asked hit vs smashed

Experiment two- to see if the leading questions changed the response given or the memories were altered due to the leading question

Question 7

Loftus and Palmer
Method

Answer 7

Experiment 1- 45 participants were shown 7 films of traffic accidents, they were then asked “how fast was the cars going when they _________ each other”
- smashed
-collided
-bumped
-hit
-contacted

Question 8

Loftus and Palmer
Results

Answer 8

-smashed = 40.8 kph
-collided = 39.2 kph
-bumped= 38.1 kph
-hit = 34 kph
-contacted = 31.8 kph

Question 9

Loftus and Palmer
Conclusion

Answer 9

Leading questions can affect a persons memory of an event, when questioning witnesses police officers should avoid leading questions

Question 10

Loftus and Palmer
Limitations

Answer 10

• low ecological validity
• low population validity

Question 11

Why do leading questions affect eye witness testimony?

Answer 11

• response- bias explanation suggests that the wording of the question has no real effect on the participants memory, but just influences how they decide to answer.the word ‘smashed ’caused the participants to choose a higher speed estimate
• the second Loftus and Palmer experiment was to support the substitution explanation- the wording of the leading question actually changes the participants memory of the clip. The critical word actually altered the memory of the incident

Question 12

Post event discussion

Answer 12

• when co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other (post event discussion) their eyewitness testimonies may become contaminated. This is because they combine (mis) information from other witnesses to their own memory
• procedure= Fiona Gabbert and her colleagues (2003) studied participants in Paris, each participant watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view, after discussion 71% memories changed compared to 0% when none spoke to each other
• this is evidence of memory conformity

Question 13

Schemas

Answer 13

• knowledge structures that relate to commonly encountered objects, situation or people, like a stereotype
• enable us to predict events’ make sense of unfamiliar circumstances, organise our own behaviour
• act as filters to perception and recall

Question 14

Loftus and Pickerell (1995)

Answer 14

• participants were given three true and one false memory (being lost in a mall) events from mainly and asked to elaborate on them
• there were 24 participants
• recall was better for the true memory, it they did recall facts which did not occur
• the more they talked about it the more they remembered

Question 15

Loftus (1980)

Answer 15

• two groups of participants (dependent group designs)
• video= pedestrians knocked over when car didn’t stop at ‘stop’ or ‘yield’ sign
• given leading question about the opposite sign
• split into 4 groups, each group offered different amounts of money to try and motivate them
• no significant difference between groups in recall
• suggests that misleading information permanently over writes the original memory

Question 16

Loftus- weapon focus effect

Answer 16

• “this is where in violent crimes, arousal may focus the witness on more central details of the attack e.g. weapons than the more peripheral details e.g. what was going on and what the perpetrator looked like.”

Question 17

Simons and Chabris (1999)

Answer 17

• a gorilla attention test
• the watcher was told to count the passes of the basketball between the player since white
• a person dressed as a gorilla passes through the games, but as people are focus on counting the passes less people notice him

Question 18

Memory conformity

Answer 18

• where people are being influenced by another persons report
• results in the individuals memory report becoming more similar to the another persons memory
• may introduce mistakes which lead to inaccurate recall

Question 19

Repeat questioning

Answer 19

• each time an eyewitness is interviewed, there is a possibility that comments from the interviewer get incorporated into their recall
• leading questions can also alter recollection
• especially when children are being interviewed about a crime

Question 20

anxiety

Answer 20

a state of emotional and physical arousal, there is research to suggest that anxiety can make eyewitnesses recall both better and worse

Question 21

negative effects of anxiety

Answer 21

anxiety creates physiological arousal which prevents us paying attention to important cues, research has often looked at the effect of weapons (which create anxiety) on recall- weapon focus
- anxiety has negative focus on recall
- anxiety can enhance recall
- weapon focus

Question 22

Christianson and Hubinette (1993)

Answer 22

• questioned real victims of a bank robbery
• they found that those who had actually been threatened were more accurate in their recall compared to those who were onlookers
• this was also true 15 months later
  this tells us that the state of anxiety increases the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Question 23

Christianson and Hubinette (+)

Answer 23

• it has high ecological validity because it was a real scenario it uses real victims and onlookers and tests immediately and after (a repeated measures design)
• they use the same sample both times- keeps as many variables the same as possible- strong internal validity

Question 24

Christianson and Hubinette (-)

Answer 24

• there are extraneous variables which cannot be controlled- the experiences were not uniform due to it not being a lab experiment but a field experiment, so each victim/onlooker will have a different experience
• lacks reliability as it cannot be repeated and the same results be ensured

Question 25

Loftus (1979) procedure

Answer 25

• an independent group design (either in an ‘anxiety’ or ‘non-anxiety’ group)
• anxiety witnessed a heated conversation with glass breaking and furniture overturned, man holds a blood stained paper knife (letter knife)
• non-anxiety witnessed a discussion about equipment failure and a man leaving a room with a pen in his hands
• participants asked to identify the man from 50 photos

Question 26

Loftus (1979) findings

Answer 26

• anxiety condition- 33% recognition
• non-anxiety condition- 49% recognition

Question 27

Loftus (1979) conclusions

Answer 27

• anxiety can lead to a decrease in eyewitness testimony accuracy
• eyewitness testimony in court cannot be trusted as most eyewitnesses experience anxiety
• weapon focus- eyewitnesses focus on weapon rather than the perpetrator

Question 28

Loftus (1979)- supporting research

Answer 28

Mueller et al (1978)
-measured anxiety levels of 96 pp’s
- gave them 50 photos to look at
- mixed these photos with 50 unseen photos
- recognition was best for those with low anxiety levels

Question 29

Loftus (1979) opposing research

Answer 29

Christianson and Hubinette (1993)
- questioned 110 witnesses of 22 bank robberies
- all would have experienced great anxiety
- all had exceptional recall of events
Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
- questioned eyewitnesses to an attempted robbery of a gun shop
- those who reported being most anxious remembered more
Brown and Kulik (1977) ‘flashbulb memory’
- our memories for vivid, one-off and highly emotionally charged events is permanently and vividly imprinted
- not subject to forgetting

Question 30

Cognitive interview- 4 stages

Answer 30

1) recall everything- every detail
2) context reinstatement- recreate both internal and external context
3) recall in different orders- asked in different order e.g. start to end then the opposite
4) recall from different perspectives- another point of view either witness or offender

Question 31

Enhanced cognitive interview

Answer 31

Fisher et al- additional features such as eye contact, encouraging relaxation and slower speaker along with active listening and avoiding distractions

Question 32

Cognitive interview (+)

Answer 32

• Geiselman et al- pps saw simulated violent crimes and then were interviewed by standard, cognitive or hypnosis, cognitive best results (41.1)
• Geiselman et al- intruder wearing blue backpack enters and steals projector, cognitive best recall and less interference from leading questions

Question 33

Cognitive interview (-)

Answer 33

• Kebell et al- improve accuracy of recall but did not decrease amount of incorrect statements and is time consuming
• Geiselman- does not work well for children under 6 years old, to complicated to understand