Factors Affecting the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony: Misleading Information

Question 1

What is eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

The evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed a crime with a view to identifying the perpetrator

Question 2

What is misleading information?

Answer 2

• Found in forms of questions

- Using words to imply wrongly that something has happened so the witness gives a false testimony

Question 3

What is leading questions according to response-bias explanation?

Answer 3

• Wording of question has no effect on eyewitness’s memory of event
• BUT influence kind of answer given

Question 4

What is leading question according to substitution explanation?

Answer 4

• Wording of question does affect eyewitness memory

- Interferes with original memory = distorting memory

Question 5

Who researched into leading questions?

Answer 5

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Question 6

What was Loftus and Palmer (1974) procedure?

Answer 6

• 45 participants (students) watched a clip of a car accident
• Asked ‘About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
• Changed ‘hit’ to either contacted, bumped, collided and smashed

Question 7

What was the findings of the Loftus and Palmer (1974)?

Answer 7

• ‘Contacted’ = 31.8 mph

- ‘Smashed’ = 40.4 mph

Question 8

What is memory contamination in terms of post-event discussion (PED)?

Answer 8

When co-witness discuss a crime, they mix information from other witnesses with their own memories

Question 9

What is memory conformity in terms of post-event discussion (PED)?

Answer 9

Witnesses go along with each other to win social approval or because the believe the other witnesses are right

Question 10

Who studied into post-event discussion?

Answer 10

Gabbert et al (2003)

Question 11

What was the procedure of Gabbert et al (2003)?

Answer 11

• Paired participants watched a video of the same crime but filmed the event into different perspectives so that each participant couldn’t see the same element
• Participants discussed what they could see before completing a recall test

Question 12

What was the findings of Gabbert et al (2003)?

Answer 12

• 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they didn’t see but picked up in the post-event discussion
• In the control group, where there was no discussion there was no errors

Question 13

Does research into misleading questions have a practical application?

Answer 13

YES

Question 14

Why does research into misleading questions have a real-life application?

Answer 14

As police officers or investigators can take in to account of the serious consequences of inaccurate eyewitness testimony

Question 15

What is a limitation of Loftus and Palmer (1974)?

Answer 15

Artificial materials

Question 16

What is bad about artificial material?

Answer 16

Lacks generalisability and may be unlikely to show the actually effect of a research

Question 17

Why is individual differences (such as age) a limitation when studying eyewitness testimony?

Answer 17

• As older people are less accurate at recall

- age groups are more accurate at identifying own age group (own-age bias)

Question 18

Why do studies into eyewitness testimony lack external validity?

Answer 18

In real life the accuracy of the event has much more importance than in research study so eyewitness testimony in real life may be more accurate than in research study