eyewitness testimony

Question 1

what are some strengths of misleading information?

Answer 1

1. important practical uses in the justice system, psychologists may be asked to explain the limits of EWT to juries and it is important police don’t ask leading questions to eyewitnesses as it may distort their memory, the effects of misleading information can protect innocent people from faulty convictions due to unreliable EWT

Question 2

what are some weaknesses of misleading information?

Answer 2

2. one limitation of the substitution explanation is that EWT is only more accurate for some aspects of an event than others, study done where participants were asked misleading questions after watching a video clip, they remembered more central details so they were distorted by the questions which is what substitution explanation would explain, therefore a limited theory
3. use of artificial tasks and stimulus by both Loftus and Palmer and Gabbert, eg. the video shown of the car crash did not expose the participants to the anxiety of experiencing a negative or positive effect on the accuracy of EWT, this reduces the ecological validity of the findings so is limited on what misleading information may truly tell us about the usefulness of EWT

Question 3

what are some strengths of effects of anxiety?

Answer 3

• supporting evidence for anxiety having a negative effect, Valentine and Mesout did a study in the London Dungeon and measured the heart rate (an objective measure) of participants and the high anxiety group could recall less details about the actor, suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event
• supporting evidence for the positive effects of anxiety, 58 witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden were interviewed and direct victims like bank workers experienced the most anxiety and were the most accurate with all witnesses being very accurate, these findings from actual crimes show that anxiety can have a positive effect on the accuracy of eyewitness recall

Question 4

what are some weaknesses of effects of anxiety?

Answer 4

• unusualness not anxiety - Pickel did a study using scissors, wallet, handgun and raw chicken as the hand held items in a hair salon, eyewitness accuracy was significantly worse in the unusual conditions showing that in Scott and Johnson’s original study, the participants may have just been surprised at what they saw rather than scared
• real life studies and especially the use of field studies are susceptible to effects of extraneous variables which have not been controlled, for example, Yuille and Cutshall could not have controlled the influence of post-event discussion which also has been seen to have a negative impact on EWT, this alongside media influences and the effects of individual schemas means that field studies to support EWT may be flawed and are limited