factors influencing EWT

Question 1

what is a weakness of EWT?

Answer 1

• our memories are not as accurate as we might want or expect them to be and can be affected by number of factors, all of which influences how reliable we are in court

Question 2

what are some factors that might influence the account of what you have seen to the police?

Answer 2

• trauma
• media
• distraction and noise
• reconstructive memory (rationalising and confabulation)

Question 3

what is post-event information?

Answer 3

• when referring to eyewitness unreliability, it is info encountered after event has occurred; implications are that this post-event info interferes with memory of event
• post-event info can be misleading info

Question 4

what is critical about post-event information?

Answer 4

• encoding of event seen by witness is just as critical as initial witnessing of offence itself when maintaining accurate testimony
• often witnesses are interviewed over period of time after offence and some time before case may go to trial
• experiences of witness in this time period can have impact on what witnesses think they saw during offence
• can result in them providing inaccurate info at crucial times as other info can confabulate info they have already encoded

Question 5

what can the witness encounter during the period between criminal event and trial?

Answer 5

• additional info about the event from other sources including media, other witnesses, lawyers or police
• under some conditions exposure to this post-event info may increase or damage witness’s report

Question 6

post-event information and reconstructive memory

Answer 6

• occur when we attempt to make sense of what we have seen and are influenced by our interpretations of situations as well as our own cultural norms and expectations
• we do not recall information in exactly the same form as it was encoded
• instead, there is tendency to recall main points or underlying meaning in a way that makes most sense to individual
• info presented to witnesses after event can influence person’s schema about what they think happened within event, particularly if event was unusual or outside their normal experience, making for less accurate memories

Question 7

supporting evidence for post-event information influencing reliability of EWT (L & P)

Answer 7

Loftus and Palmer 1974
- in their question, wrote that cars ‘hit’ ‘collided’ ‘bumped’ ‘smashed’ or ‘contacted’ and was post-event as the question was asked after films were watched
- post-event question affected estimate of speed
- in second part of experiment, they asked about ’broken glass’ when there has in fact been no broken glass and found that ’smashed’ suggested broken glass more than ’hit’
- Loftus and Palmer found ppts were ’led’ by questions and importantly for eyewitness reliability, they were ’misled’

Question 8

opposing evidence for post-event information NOT influencing reliability of EWT (Y & C) complete