Factors influencing EWT: Reliability Flashcards
What are the four factors that could influence EWT?
- Post event information
- Leading questions
- The influence of anxiety
- Weapon focus
What might an eye witness use to reconstruct their memory of the event so that it makes sense?
Past knowledge can interfere with the recall of memories. The witness may provide information based on a previous memory and schemas arising from that.
Regarding ‘post event information’, what might reinforce an error in what someone thinks they have seen?
Speaking with someone else after the event and having a discussion about what they have witnessed.
What is a leading question?
A leading question may create a different response to that remembered, and as a result the witness may become confused and/or use the question when accessing memory.
What kind of questions should the police use when interviewing a witness?
Open questions
Who reviewed 21 studies relating to the influence of anxiety?
Deffenbacher (1983) concluded:
Moderate anxiety helps memory
If an eye-witness’ anxiety continues to rise and becomes extreme, this creates a decline in recall.
How does weapon focus affect eye witness testimony?
Witnesses experience greater stress when they are exposed to a weapon and they tend to focus on the weapon.
This distracts them from encoding other information about the event that may be relevant.
Therefore, they remember less about the event because they were distracted by the weapon.
This makes their testimony unreliable.
Who reviewed 19 tests when a weapon was present and found that there was a lower accuracy to identify the offender?
Steblay (1992)
Who found that it was the unusualness of the weapon that affected eye witness testimony rather than the presence of a weapon?
Pickel (1999)
They found when a man pulled out a raw chicken or a Pillsbury Dough Boy to pay a cashier rather than presenting his wallet, this created surprise and the attention was drawn towards the ‘weapon’.
Who conducted research into the effect of using leading questions?
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
They found that if the witness heard the word ‘smashed’, they would report seeing broken glass (even if there was none).
Who provided contradictory evidence of post event information and found that memory of an event was still accurate several months after the event?
Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
What application value does research into EWT have?
The legal system has changed as a result of EWT research.
In the UK, it is now necessary to have more evidence than eye-witness testimony alone to get a guilty verdict.
How can we link EWT studies to issues and debates?
Practical issues in research design
Lab studies of EWT exercise a high level of control of the environment in order to establish cause and effect.
However, such studies lack real consequences (no one goes to prison) and participants don’t experience the anxiety of real crime.
