Lesson 10: Eyewitness Testimony

Question 1

What is Eyewitness Testimony?

Answer 1

Evidence given to a court by people who have seen a crime, based on their memory. The evidence could be details of the crime or who did it.

Question 2

What are leading questions?

Answer 2

Questions that are phrased to encourage the witness unto giving a certain answer

Question 3

What does the response-bias explanation argue?

Answer 3

That leading questions don’t affect memory but the response a person gives

Question 4

What does the substitution-bias explanation argue?

Answer 4

That leading questions distort the memory as they contain misleading information

Question 5

What was the procedure of leading questions?

Answer 5

• Loftus and Palmer showed 45 American students a film of a car crash and asked them to guess the speed of the car
• Different verbs were used in the question
• They were: contacted, hit, bumped, collided or smashed

Question 6

What were the findings of Loftus and Palmers experiment?

Answer 6

• contacted: 31 mph
• smashed: 41 mph

A week later, participants were asked if there was broken glass (there wasn’t), 32% in the smashed conditioned said yes, but 12% in the contacted condition said yes

Question 7

Evaluation of Leading Question Experiment

Answer 7

+ Lab experiment so highly controlled, no chance of extraneous variables. High validity and replication so is reliable

• Questionable ecological validity as it was a video, they do not have an emotional connection to the event like a real witness would
• Population validity as participants were students and less experienced drivers, maybe more experienced drivers would know speeds better

Question 8

What is Post-Event Discussion

Answer 8

The memory becomes contaminated through discussion of events with co-witnesses, which leads to misinformation.

A desire for social approval can lead witnesses to reach a consensus (memory conformity)

Question 9

Procedure + Findings of Post-Event Discussion

Answer 9

• Gabbert put participants in pairs and each watched a different video of the same event so each had unique details
• One condition had the pair discussing the event before individually recalling the event. Another condition was not allowed to discuss the event

-71% of discussed pairs recalled things their partner has watched, and that they had learnt through the discussion.

Question 10

Evaluation of Post-Event Discussion

Answer 10

+ population validity: 2 groups, one with younger people, one with olde people, no significant differences = post event discussion affects adults in a similar way

• ecological validity: both groups knew they were in an experiment and would have paid extra attention, this is unrealistic as real life witnesses are exposed to less information