lesson 16 - Key Question - Is EWT too unreliable?

Question 1

A01

Answer 1

• EWT: account/recall of event or crime given to the court and jury. Juries tend to rely on the info given by EW to reach verdict, especially when there is lack of forensic evidence
• Stats: research from the innocent project in US shows 69% of false convictions are caused by inaccurate EWT
• Case: recent eg of wrongful conviction cus of EWT is Ronald Cotton who was wrongfully convicted of rape and lost 10 years before exonerated due to DNA evidence

this has social impacts such as a criminal who is not convicted and is a threat to society as they get away with crime

this has economic impacts such as it costs 48,000 pounds annually for one prisoner and this has opportunity costs

this means people lose faith in the judiciary system as law and order loses power as people believe they can get away with crime

Question 2

Para 1 - reconstructive memory

Answer 2

A02:
Bartletts’s reconstructive memory theory describes that memory is not passive or true record and instead is active reconstruction based on schema. schemas are mental constructs unique to each based on previous knowledge, expectations, motivations and interpretations. this allows induviduals to confabulate scenarios (omission, rationalisation, familiarisation, transformation). this can be applied to the affects it would have on LTM and the accuracy of an EWT as if an individual confabulates a crime the EWT is unreliable.

A03:
War of ghosts
research support of active reconstruction comes from Bartlett’s War of Ghost study. the recall of the unfamiliar story had become confabulated via omissions - the story had become a lot shorter and simplified. or the participants transforming the hunting of seals to hunting of fish. therefore EWT may be inaccurate, especially if the crime is unfamiliar

However, the study does not take into account the influence of stress on memory and so can’t represent how memories would act during a traumatising crime

Question 3

Para 2 - stress

Answer 3

A02:
stress is body’s reaction (physical, mental, emotional) to any change that requires a response. Yerkes-Dodson’s law suggest effect of stress on EWT is an inverted U relationship. The initial stage of the model is a low stress arousal level which is mainly associated with lack of sleep, motivation and fatigue. This is the state when we are not expecting to perform any tasks, thus attention mechanisms are not active. Optimum arousal is condition of perfect balance where the individual isn’t too aroused or under aroused and so performance is at its best for simple and complex tasks.

A03:
Yuille and Cutshall’s study can also support the role of stress in the accuracy of EWT. The 13 witnesses were exposed to a real-life shooting where they were seen as highly anxious at the time of the incident, their self-reported anxiety was more than 5 on a 7 point scale. However, they still were able to provide an accurate account of the event 4-5 months later.

However, Valentine and Mesout conducted a study in the London Dugneons and found that out of the participants who had high levels of state anxiety, only 17% could recall the scary person from the 9 person line up, showing that stress can reduce the reliability

Question 4

Para 3 - post event discussion

Answer 4

A02:
post event discussions is a conversation between a co-witness or a police interviewer after a crime/accident has take place which may contaminate a witness’ memory of the event. memories can change by misinformation presented in the form of a leading question which give someone an expectation of the event. Information after an event can influence a schema, especially if the event was unusual. Loftus coined the term ‘misinformation acceptance’ where people accept the misleading info after an event and merge it into their memory.

A03:
Post-event discussions having an impact on the accuracy of EWT is supported by Experiment 2 of the Loftus and Palmer study. They showed 150 students a one-minute film of a traffic accident with multiple cars and gave them a questionnaire with the question ‘How fast were the cars going when they ____ each other?’, replacing the blank with either smashed or hit. A week later, they gave participants another questionnaire which included the question ‘Did you see any broken glass’ despite there being no broken glass. 16 people in the Smashed condition remembered there being broken glass compared to 7 people in the Hit condition. those in the smashed condition had their memories confabulated by their schemas. Therefore, the study’s results provide evidence for post-event discussions causing the creation of false memories, meaning they could have a negative impact of EWT accuracy.

However, Yuille and Cutshall interviewed 13 witnesses to a real life shooting in Canada where they planted incorrect and misleading info to see if participants would pick up on it 4-5 months later. however participants were not misled by being asked about the ‘yellow panel’ which was blue for example. this suggests EWT are accurate for those who were deeply moved by an incident

Question 5

Conclusion

Answer 5

There is research to support both EWT being reliable and unreliable which would mean that they should not be used in real life. However it depends on the individual and how stressful or meaningful and event is