Factors Affecting The Accuracy Of Eyewitness testimony: Misleading Information Flashcards
What does eyewitness testimony?
Ability of people to remember details of events such as accidents and crime it can be affected by factors such as misleading information and anxiety.
Explain misleading information?
Incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after an event such as leading questions and post event discussion between co-witness and other people
what’s a leading question?
a question which because of the way is phrased suggest a certain answer for example, was the knife in the left hand leads to a person think where the knife was
What is post event discussion?
when there is more than one witness to an event. witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or with other people this may influence the accuracy of each witnesses recall
Explain research on leading questions?
Leading questions is a particular issue for eyewitness testimony because police questions may direct a witness to a particular answer in the experiment, below they used words such as smashed, bumped to suggest a speed of the car.
Pro - Loftus and Palmer arranged for 45 participants to watch films with clips of car accidents they asked misleading and leading questions and they were asked to describe how fast the car was travelling. They were all given different verbs such as hit ,contacted, bumped collided and smashed.
Explain Findings of EWT car experiment?
The mean estimated speed was calculated, the verb contacted resulted in 31.8 MPH and the verb smashed the mean was 40.5 mph the leading question biased that eyewitnesses recall of an event
why do leading questions affect EWT?
Wording of question has no real effect on participants memory but just influences how they decide to answer. for example when a participant gets a leading question such as smashed it encourages them to choose a high speed estimate. Palmer conducted a second experiment that supported the substitution explanation that the verb changes the participants memory of the film clip as the participants heard smashed. They’re more likely to see broken glass even though there was none this means it altered the memory of the incident.
Explain research on post event discussion?
Fiona studied participants in pairs each participant watched the video of the same crime but a different point of view. This mean participants could see elements in the event that the other could not, both participants then discussed what they had seen. The research found that 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the events that they did not see, the corresponding figure in control group when there was no discussion with 0% this was evidence of memory conformity.
Why does post event discussion affect EWT?
memory contamination when co witnesses Discuss it with each other their eyewitness testimony becomes altered or distorted this is because they combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories. Another explanation is memory conformity is because witnesses often go along with each other either to win social approval or because they believe the other witness are rights and they are wrong. the actual memories are unchanged
evaluate one strength into misleading information?
It has important practical use in the criminal justice system. The consequence of inaccurate EWT can be very serious leading questions could have distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful and how they phrase their questions when interviewing eye witnesses. psychologists help in court trials to explain the limits of EWT to juries those psychologist can help improve the way the legal system works by protecting innocent people.
Evaluate one limitation of EWT?
EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than others. Sutherland and Hayne showed participant a video clip where participants were related to ask misleading questions. Their recall was more accurate for central details of the event then the peripheral ones the participants attention is focused on central features of the event and these memories were relative to be resistant to misleading information. This suggests original memories for central details survived and were not distorted.
What is another limitation of memory conformity?
Post event discussion alters EWT. Skageberg and wright showed participants film clips there were two versions hair was dark brown and one but light brown. participants discussed the clip in pairs each seen different versions. The two witnesses talked and reported a blend of the two browns. this suggests memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post of a discussion
