Factors affecting EWT Flashcards
What is an eye witness testimony?
Is a legal term which refers to the account given by a witness to a crime or other dramatic event, such as a car crash.
What factors affect EWT?
- Stress/anxiety
- Weapon focus (stress, attentional narrowing and unusualness)
- Post event information
- False memories
- Leading questions
How does stress and anxiety affect ETW?
Witnessing an event can be very stressful and this can impact on the ability to recall.
What is the yerkes-Dodson’s law?
There is an optimum level of stress for performance to be successful but after that it will decline. The law suggests that if the witness is too relaxed then the low level of arousal can also produce less accurate recall.
Strength - Lab studies
Most research into EWT is conducted in lab environments, this means extraneous variables can be easily controlled for so interval validity is increased. The conditions also allow the studies to be replicated very easily so increased test re-test reliability.
How does weapon focus affect ETW?
‘Weapon focus’ refers to the concentration of an eye witness’s attention on a weapon, as the resultant reduction in ability to remember other details of the crime because they are so focused on the weapon involved in that crime. This is said to be due to attentional narrowing.
How is stress related to EWT?
Psychologists believe that EW to violent crimes, especially crimes where the perpetrator threatens the witness with a weapon, are usually unable to recollect or give accurate statements and details about the crimes due to the arousal state that is induced by the presence of a weapon.
How is attentional narrowing related to EWT?
Items that ‘stick out’ are processed in a different way and are therefore better recalled. The isolation effect, predicts that an item ‘stands out’ better and is better remembered than other items.
How is unusualness related to EWT?
It may not be a threat posed by a weapon that causes reduced recall, instead it may be the unusualness of the weapon. Pickel suggests that ‘weapon focus’ could be caused by any object, not just weapons as long as it is unusual within a given context.
How does post event information affect EWT?
The period between witnessing an event and its recall can have an impact on what is recalled. The witness may encounter additional information about the event from other sources e.g. the media/news coverage.
What is confabulation?
Unconsciously filling in gaps during memory recall.
What is rationalisation?
Reasoning with what must have happened.
What is disortion?
Changes details about events so they fit with our schemas.
How do leading questions affect EWT?
A leading question is a question that suggests the particular answer the examiner is looking to have confirmed. For example if someone said @did you see the broken glass?” you would assume there was broken glass so would say yes even though you may have not seen any.
Strength - Loftus and palmer
If the word ‘smashed’ was used participants implied the car was travelling at a faster speed than if the verb ‘contacted’ was used which implies that there wasn’t much destruction.
