Eyewitness Testimony - Misleading Questions Flashcards
Intro
Eye witness testimony plays a crucial role in criminal justice
Accuracy always assumed to be reliable
Up to 1000 wrong convictions in USA - innocent is convicted and guilty is free
Eyewitness testimony goes through 3 stages
- Witness encodes details of event into LTM - could be partial or distorted
- Witness retains infomation for a period of time - can be lost or modified
- Witness retrieves memory from storage - accuracy of reconstruction depend on retrieval cues or type of questions
LOTUS & PALMER
AIM - investigate accuracy of eyewitness testimony/ memory in particular leading questions and if they distort memory
PROCEDURE - 45 students shown 7 films of car crashes. Fill questionnaire where some where asked how fast wee cars before they hit?. Other got asked same question but different words ‘smashed’,’bumped’,’contacted’
FINDINGS - different words used when asked lead to different speed answers
CONCLUSIONS - form/wording of questions had effects on witness answers
Criticisms of LOTUS & PALMER study
Not true t life - lab experiments - may not be taken seriously
Emotional arousal enhances memory when in action -those threatened more accurate in recall
Post event discussion
GABBET
Shown videos of car accidents, each video different, and participants allowed to speak after
People copy other people statements as they second guess
71% people picked up something that wasn’t in their video
Therefore witnesses aren’t allowed to speak about crime - effects testimony
Ao3 - strength - useful real life applications
P - has hugely important practical uses in real life world - consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious
E - lotus - people believe leading questions can have a distorting effect on memory - police officers have to be carful on how they phrase heir interrogations
E - physiologist believe they can make an important positive difference to lives of real people by improving legal system
A03 - limitation - tasks are artificial
P - participants watched films which is very different to witnessing a real accident as clip lacks real stress
E - some evidence that emotion can have effect on memory (CHRISTIANSON & HUBINETTE)
E - students that use artificial tasks may tel little about misleading questions as studies aren’t same as real life
A03 - limitation - demand characteristics
P - many answers participants give in lab settings studies are because of demand characteristics
E - participants don’t usually want to let researcher down and want to feel helpful so when asked something they don’t know they guess what they want to hear
E - it isn’t because of misleading questions and means research is unreliable
