MEMORY — EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

Question 1

What are the main factors that affect EWT?

Answer 1

Misleading Information (Leading Questions & Post-Event Discussion)

Anxiety

Question 2

Outline leading questions

Answer 2

Implies something about the event, possibly contaminating the witness’ memory and causing them to recall incorrect information

e.g. “What colour was the perpetrator’s hat?”

Question 3

Loftus and Palmer’s method and sample

Answer 3

Lab experiment

45 American students (split into 5 groups of 9)

Question 4

Loftus and Palmer’s procedure

Answer 4

All participants shown a video of a car crash

Each group separately asked a leading question with a different verb

Participants’ speed estimates were measured in MPH

Question 5

Loftus and Palmer — what was the leading question they used?

Answer 5

“How fast were the cars travelling when they

[SMASHED/HIT/COLLIDED/BUMPED/CONTACTED]

each other?”

Question 6

Loftus and Palmer’s findings and conclusion

Answer 6

Participants who heard ‘smashed’ guessed a higher speed (40mph)

than those who heard ‘contacted’ (31.8mph)

This suggests that the phrasing of a question can influence a person’s memory of an event

Question 7

How does anxiety affect EWT?

Answer 7

Anxiety is a strong emotional and physical state

Extreme anxiety has been found to negatively impact EWT as witnesses focus on certain aspects of the event, limiting recall

Question 8

Johnson and Scott’s procedure

Answer 8

Lab experiment

Bla bla bla

Question 9

Johnson and Scott’s findings and conclusion

Answer 9

Low anxiety condition identited the man 45% of the time

High anxiety condition identited the man 33% of the time

Anxiety causes weapon focus, where the witnesses concentrate on the weapon rather than the person due to fear

Question 10

Outline Christianson and Hubinette’s research

Answer 10

58 real-life witnesses of a bank robbery were interviewed — some had been directly threatened, some were bystanders

Recall was over 75% across all witnesses
Those who had been directly threatened had an even higher accuracy of EWT

Contradicts research that high anxiety causes less accurate EWT

Question 11

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 11

Proposes that you can get the highest accuracy of EWT at an optimum level of anxiety — not too high, not too low either.

This can explain the difference in research findings.

Question 12

Who made the Cognitive Interview?

Answer 12

Fisher and Geiselman