Improving Accuracy Of Eyewitness Testimony

Question 1

Description eye witness testimony

Answer 1

How people remember the details of events that they have observed for example crimes

Question 2

Def leading questions

Answer 2

A question which is written in a way that it suggests a certain answer for the person answering it eg which hand was the knife in

Question 3

Supporting study of eye witness testimony

Answer 3

Loftus and Palmer

Question 4

Loftus and Palmer aim

Answer 4

To investigate the effects of different types of question on responses to sellers of crashing cars

Question 5

Loftus and Palmer method

Answer 5

Ps watched film clips of car accidents and were gives questions about the accidents

• ps asked a critical question about how fast the cars were given
• 5 groups given different verbs ‘hit, contacted, bumped, collided and smashed’

Question 6

Loftus and Palmer results

Answer 6

Findings were that leading questioned resulted in bias

- 31mph contacted vs 45mph smashed

Question 7

What are the 2 types of leading questions

Answer 7

Response bias

Substitution

Question 8

Response bias meaning

Answer 8

Wording has no real life effect in their memory but just influenced how they decide to answer encourage change in answer

Question 9

Substitution meaning

Answer 9

Wording changes memory

Question 10

Post event discussion def

Answer 10

Is where there is more than one witness and witnesses may discuss the event with the other witnesses, or with other people which may influence the witnesses recalling of the event

Question 11

Who did a study of PED

Answer 11

Grabbert et al

Question 12

Method of gabbert et al

Answer 12

Studied ps in pairs, watched the same crime from different angles meaning ps saw dif elements
- they then discussed the event prior to recall

Question 13

Findings gabbert et al

Answer 13

71% ps mistakenly recalled aspects they did not see but picked up in discussion, compared to 0% in controls, concludes witnesses go along with one another

Question 14

4 evaluation points

Answer 14

Weakness - time consuming
Strength - support for effectiveness of the cog interview
Neither - has some elements more effective than others
Strength - supportive evidence

Question 15

Elaboration of weakness - time consuming

Answer 15

• it takes longer to conduct than a normal interview to conduct
• need to establish rapport with witness
• also requires special training which many forces can’t provide fully
• less useful and reduces application in real world

Question 16

Elaboration of strength - support for effectiveness of cog interview

Answer 16

• koehnken et al found out that witnesses recalled more incorrect information when interviewed with cog interview technique
• perhaps because more details recall increases the changes of making mistakes

Question 17

Elaboration - has some elements more effective than others

Answer 17

• Milne and bull found each individual element to be of equal value
• each produced more info to standard procedure
• however, elects 1 and 2 were better than all other conditions so all elements are needed
• reduced time consuming issues but still more effective than standard interview

Question 18

Elaboration strength - supportive evidence

Answer 18

• Fisher et al found witnesses reported in greater detail in their accounts of crimes where American detectives had been trained to use the technique

Question 19

One way of improving eye witness testimony

Answer 19

Cognitive interview

Question 20

What did fisher and geiselman argue

Answer 20

Eye witness testimony can be improved by improving the polices techniques when interviewing the eye witness

Question 21

How should eye witness testimony be changed

Answer 21

More psychologically based

Question 22

4 stages of cog interview

Answer 22

Report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order, chnsge perspective

Question 23

Report everything description

Answer 23

Witnesses are encouraged to include every small dteiak of events even though it may seem irrelevant because may trigger other more important messages through cues

Question 24

Reinstate the context description

Answer 24

Witness should return to original crime scene in their mind and imagine the environment such as weather and feelings related to context dependant forgetting

Question 25

Reverse the order description

Answer 25

Events should be recalled in a different chronological order to the sequence to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event actually happened rather than what they thought had happened

Question 26

Change perspective description

Answer 26

Witnesses should recall event from other people perspectives eg how it would have appeared for another witness done to distrust the effect of expectations and schema on recall

Question 27

Enhanced cog interview def

Answer 27

Focuses on the social interaction between the interviewer and eyewitness eg knowing when to establish eye contact and minimising distractions