Memory - Eyewitness Testimony Flashcards
Eyewitness testimony
Someone who has seen something happen, often in relation to a crime, and can give a first-hand description of it
Misleading information
Before an eyewitness is asked to recall what happened, they are exposed to incorrect information
- leading questions
- post-event discussion
Leading questions
Questions which prompt or encourage an answer that is wanted by the person asking the question
Loftus and palmer
Car speed:
45 students watched clips of traffic accidents, asked to describe what happened
-“how fast were the cars going when they”
Contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed into each other
Varied in intensity
Smashed - higher estimate of speed compared to the other words
Broken glass:
150 students watched a film ending with a car accident
Questionnaire to describe what happened
Asked same question, smashed, bumped, not asked question about speed
Asked again after a week if there was any broken glass
Smashed - more likely to say yes than the other groups even though there wasn’t any
Evaluation of studies
Strength:
Real world practical application
Cognitive interview - avoid leading question, ask to report everything - open needed questions
Kohnken et al: cognitive interview provided more accurate information than the standard interview
Post event discussion
Witnesses of the same event discuss the details of a crime after it has happened
Gabbert et al
2 groups watched a girl returning a book in a library
Only 1 group saw the girl steal £10, the other group didn’t
Completed a questionnaire on the events that occured
Individually of with a co-witness from the other group
71% of reported information was gathered from the other witness
60% said the girl was guilty of a crime even though they didn’t see it
PED influences recall of a crime - influence accuracy of EWT
Evaluating research
Strengths:
Highly controlled experimental settings
Enables replication to check reliability
Weaknesses:
Artificial studies - video recordings of events
Lacks ecological validity
Sampling bias - American students not representative of whole population
Level of anxiety + seriousness is missing
Foster et al - EW more accurate when they believed that the video was of a real life robbery and their responses would influence the trial
Weapons focus
Concentration of a witness’s attention on a weapon, which results in reducing their ability to remember other details of the crime
Johnson + Scott
1 group of P’s overheard discussion about equipment not working, man left lab with pen + grease on his hands - low anxiety
Group 2 overheard heated argument followed by glass breaking and crashing chairs, man left room with a knife covered in blood - high anxiety
49% recalled picture of man from low anxiety
34% recalled man from high anxiety
Due to weapon focus
- ethical issues - psychological harm, deception, lack of informed consent, lack right to withdraw
Positive impact of anxiety of memory
Fight or flight increases alertness - more aware of what’s going on, memories are stronger because of how arousing + stressful they were
Yuille + Cutshall:
EW to robbery of gun shop the shot him twice when trying to get away, shop owner retaliated and shot him back 6 times
21 witnesses all interviewed - 4-5 months later 13
interviewed again
High levels of accuracy in both, most distressed gave the most accurate account after 5 months
Christiansen + Hubinette:
Looked at 22 real bank robberies and found no evidence of high arousal having a negative impact on recall
Witnesses could remember accurately the details they originally provided from 4-15 months later
Evaluating research
Strengths:
Has high ecological validity, uses real life situations
Real anxiety and stress experienced
Weaknesses:
Lack of control of extraneous variable
May have been influenced by post event discussion - help comsolidate memory
Proximity to the crime - the closer you are, the more you can see
Hard to establish cause + effect
Cognitive interview
Questioning technique designed to improve the information that an eyewitness can retrieve about a crime
- Reinstate the context
Returning to the original crime scene where cues may trigger the recall of memories
Externally - thinking about surrounding environment at the time of the event (room, objects, sounds)
Internally- how they were feeling at the time + context (psychological state - 5 senses)
- Report everything
The eyewitness is not to filter out or select what information to report.
Everything that they can recall from the event should be described .
- Reverse the order
The events of the crime should be recalled in a different sequence than the order in which they saw the crime take place
Recency effect - most recent events that occurred are easier to remember than the middle + end of the crime
Problems with schemas - can potentially lead to errors in our memory, what we say might have happened may be altered to fit in with what we expected to happen due to last experiences
Geiselman et al:
When events are recalled in forward order, some people reconstruct what must have happened based on prior knowledge of similar crime scenarios
- Change perspective
The eyewitness tries to recall the events from the perspective of others that were present during the crime
To disrupt effect of schemas
Enhanced cognitive interview- Fisher
Interviewer builds rapport with the EW
- Victims are often asked to give detailed descriptions of intimate, personal experiences to police officers who are complete strangers
- victims must be psychologically comfortable with the interviewer as a person to go through the mental effort and emotional distress of describing crime-related details
- police interviews must therefore invest time at the outset of the interview to develop meaningful, personal rapport with the witness
Supporting evidence for cognitive interview
Geiselman et al:
P’s watched police training films of stimulated violent crimes
Interviewed 48 hours later using standard or cognitive interview
Higher number of correct items recalled in cognitive interview
Fisher et al:
7 detectives trained to use cognitive interview, 9 werent
CI detectives produced 63% more information than untrained detectives with over 90% accuracy
Limitations for cognitive interview
KOH Ken et al:
Meta analysis
42 studies- 2500 interviews
CI led to increase in correctly recalled information
But enhanced CI, more errors produced than original CI
Time consuming: longer to carry out than standard interview, time to train police officers - stated that they do not have time to conduct a full cognitive interview
