Factors Affecting Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimonies Flashcards
What is meant by the term eyewitness testimony?
the recollection of an event by a witness. It has been a centrepiece of many convictions of criminals who have onto be innocent.
How are memories affected by the schemas we propose?
when we have gaps in our knowledge and memories, our schema fills it with things from our past experience and culture, this distorts the memory and makes it less accurate
What piece of research did Bartlett do?
‘the war of the ghosts’: non native American Indians read out a native american folk tale. P’s were asked to tell the story again, a number of times over a period of weeks/months.
What are the findings of Bartlett’s study?
over time, P’ shortened the story and altered it so it fitted with their schemas (e.g. bow and arrow replaced by gun)
What are the 3 key factors affecting EWT accuracy?
- misleading information
- leading questions
- post event discussion
Why does misleading information affect the accuracy of EWT
distorts and changes memory.
This shows how changeable and malleable memory is to events in the environment
usually in the form of leading questions and in post-event discussion
What piece of research did Loftus and Palmer do?
studies the influence of misleading information in both visual and wording on questions.
45 American students were shown 7 films f traffic accidents.
after watching P’s were asked to describe what had happened as if they were a witness. They were asked how fast were he cars going when they……?
What was the IV of Loftus and Palmer’s study?
wording of the question
What was the DV of Loftus and Palmer’s study?
speed reported
What was the findings of Loftus and Palmer’s study?
estimated speed was affected by the verb used as it implied the speed which affected the memory of the P
‘Smashed’ had the fasted speed reported and ‘contacted’ had the slowest speed reported.
What is the positive evaluation of the Loftus and Palmer’s study?
- important practical uses for police officers and investigators to avoid inaccurate EWT
- lab experiment so had a high amount of control meaning no extraneous variables will affect the IV
What is the negative evaluation of the Loftus and Palmer’s study?
- lab experiment centred on an artificial task (watching videos) and as such lacks relevance to real-life scenarios. Witnessing real car crashes would have much more of an emotional impact and thus would affect recall differently
- results may be due to demand characteristics, rather than genuine changes in memory; P’s may have just given the answer they thought the researchers wanted, as suggested by which verb they heard in the key question
What is the inverted u hypothesis?
an empirical relationship between arousal (anxiety) and performance. The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal (anxiety), but only up to a point.
What is the positive evaluation of anxiety and EWT?
- good real life applications psychologists interviewed people who have already witnesses an event, you can get more out of an EWT accurately
What is the negative evaluation of anxiety and EWT?
- care must be taken with studies of anxiety and EWT as, by their very nature, such studies could produce potentially high levels of psychological harm
- supported by research, a researcher investigated the anxiety levels and accuracy of recall of 14 witness to a fatal shooting in Vancouver. Those with high anxiety had less accurate recall than those with lower levels, but those with very high anxiety had extremely high accuracy, which casts doubt on the inverted U model
