Factors Affecting the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony: Misleading Information

Question 1

Eyewitness Testimony

Answer 1

Ability to recall what happened at crime scene which they saw.

Question 2

Misleading Info

Answer 2

Incorrect info given to eyewitness after event. Would happen in form of leading qs and PED.

Question 3

Leading Question

Answer 3

Q which because of the way it’s phrased suggests a certain answer.

Question 4

Post Event Discussion

Answer 4

More than 1 eyewitness to event. Talk with other eyewitnesses which influences accuracy of each witness’ recall

Question 5

Leading Q Experiment (Loftus and Palmer) PROCEDURE

Answer 5

Watched film clips of car accidents and gave them qs about accident. Leading Q: How fast were the cars going when they hit each other? Hit suggests speed of car and there were other verbs: contacted, bumped, smashed, collided.

Question 6

Leading Q Experiment (Loftus and Palmer) FINDINGS

Answer 6

Contacted: mean estimated speed of 31.8mph. Smashed: mean of 40.5mph. Leading Q biased eyewitness recall of event and suggests there is a correct answer

Question 7

Why do Leading Qs Effect EWT?

Answer 7

Response bias. Wording of q has no effect on their memories but influences how they decide to answer. Smashed encouraged to give them a higher speed estimate

Question 8

Why do Leading Qs Effect EWT?

Answer 8

Substitution explanation. Conducted 2nd experiment: wording of questions changed their memory of the clip. Participants who said heard smashed saw broken glass (there was none). The verb altered memory of incident.

Question 9

PED (Gabbert) PRODCEDURE

Answer 9

Studied people in pairs. Each person watched video of the same crime but filmed from different points of view. Each participant could see that the other could not. Had to discuss before individual recall.

Question 10

PED (Gabbert) FINDINGS

Answer 10

71% of people mistakenly recalled aspects of event that they didn’t see in the video but discussed about it. The control group where they worked all alone had 0% inaccuracy Concluded that witness go only with the other to gain social approval or because they believe the other is right: memory conformity.

Question 11

Strength

Answer 11

Useful real life applications. Important uses in the world where the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be serious. PCs need to be careful about how they phrase their qs when interviewing eyewitness as leading qs has a bad effect on memory.

Question 12

Weakness

Answer 12

Artificial tasks. Film clips of accidents instead of real meaning they lack stress of real accident. Tell us very little about how leading qs affect EWT when it could be more reliable that studies suggest so.

Question 13

Weakness (Anastasi and Rhodes)

Answer 13

Individual differences. Older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports. Found that 18-25 gave more accurate reports than 55-78. However all age groups were more accurate when identifying people of their own age group.

Question 14

Weakness (Zaragoza and McCloskey)

Answer 14

Demand characteristics. Don’t want to let the researcher down and so be helpful. So when they don’t know the answer, they guess and give the answer which they think is more helpful

Question 15

Weakness (Foster)

Answer 15

Consequences of EWT. What you remember as an eyewitness can have important consequences in reality but the same isn’t true in research studies.