The reliability of eyewitness testimony

Question 1

outline the Introduction to the reliability of eyewitness testimony

Answer 1

Eyewitness testimony is based on the witness’ long term episodic memory of the event. Memory is the process of maintaining information over time and episodic memory refers to memory for a specific episode/event as opposed to semantic memory which refers to memory of general world knowledge. When a police officer interviews an eyewitness, the hope is to tap into some untampered memory of the event. But memories are not complete descriptions of the past, nor are they always accurate. People confuse aspects of different events, and are influenced by other people suggestions. This essay will further discuss the reconstructive processes of memory, the influence of suggestion on memory and the consequences it has on criminal cases, as well as offer an explanation for why people confuse aspects of different events, using empirical evidence from the field of psychology.

Question 2

Introduction to the reliability of eyewitness testimony

Answer 2

Eyewitness testimony is based on the witness’ long term episodic memory of the event. Memory is the process of maintaining information over time and episodic memory refers to memory for a specific episode/event as opposed to semantic memory which refers to memory of general world knowledge. When a police officer interviews an eyewitness, the hope is to tap into some untampered memory of the event. But memories are not complete descriptions of the past, nor are they always accurate. People confuse aspects of different events, and are influenced by other people suggestions. This essay will further discuss the reconstructive processes of memory, the influence of suggestion on memory and the consequences it has on criminal cases, as well as offer an explanation for why people confuse aspects of different events, using empirical evidence from the field of psychology.

Question 3

Describe the Reconstructive memory theory

Answer 3

Bartlett ’s theory of reconstructive memory is crucial to an understanding of the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Reconstructive memory suggests that in the absence of all information, we fill in the gaps to make more sense of what happened. According to Bartlett, we do this using schemas. These are our previous knowledge and experience of a situation and we use this process to complete the memory. This means that our memories are a combination of specific traces encoded at the time of the event, along with our knowledge, expectations, beliefs and experiences of such an event.

Question 4

Describe Bartlett’s experiment in support for his reconstructive theory and the results obtained

Answer 4

Bartlett used a Chinese Whispers technique where participants read a folk story called War of the Ghosts. This story was unfamiliar to the participants and from a different culture, so it did not fit in with their schemas. When it came to recalling the story, as time went on the story became shorter and shorter, and the accounts were distorted in a number of ways. He found participants left out parts of the story that they did not understand and changed information and rationalised it using their own culture.

Question 5

Criticism of Bartlett’s experiment?

Answer 5

Although the study has been criticised for using a story that did not make sense to participants, it succeeded at demonstrate that people do reconstruct memories.

Question 6

what is the usefulness of reconstructive memory theory?

Answer 6

This theory is useful in understanding how our memory can be manipulated by post event information

Question 7

When does the misinformation effect occur?

Answer 7

The misinformation effect happens when a person’s recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information.

Question 8

Outline the procedure of the original misinformation effect study

Answer 8

In the study phase, the participants were shown a series of slides, in which a car turns right at the intersection and hits a pedestrian. In one condition participants see a stop sign by the road and and in another they see a yield sign. The misinformation phase is introduced immediately after, in which participants hear a narrative describing the accident which is either consistent or misleading. Finally, in the test phase participants are given a recognition test for slides they previously watched.

Question 9

Outline the procedure of the original misinformation effect study

Answer 9

In the study phase, the participants were shown a series of slides, in which a car turns right at the intersection and hits a pedestrian. In one condition participants see a stop sign by the road and and in another they see a yield sign. The misinformation phase is introduced immediately after, in which participants hear a narrative describing the accident which is either consistent or misleading. Finally, in the test phase participants are given a recognition test for slides they previously watched.

Question 10

what did the original misinformation effect study find?

Answer 10

The findings indicate that 75% of control participants chose correctly and only 41% of misled participants were correct.

Question 11

How did the researchers interperate the findings of the original misinformation effect study?

Answer 11

Loftus and colleagues’ (1978) explanation of the findings stated that the original memory trace is overwritten by post-event information.

Question 12

who were the critics of the original misinformation study? and what was the criticism?

Answer 12

McCloskey & Zaragoza (1985a, 1985b), stating that the final recognition test does not allow the researchers to draw the bold conclusion that the misinformation overwrites the original memory trace.

Question 13

outline the modified misinformation effect procedure

Answer 13

In this technique, the misleading information is not included as an option on the test, subjects are asked instead to choose between the original item and a new item which controls for response biases and task demands. If misleading information impairs subjects’ ability to remember the original information, then misled subjects should perform more poorly than control subjects. However, if misleading information does not affect memory for the original information, then the control and misled conditions should not differ.

Question 14

outline the modified misinformation effect procedure

Answer 14

In this technique, the misleading information is not included as an option on the test, subjects are asked instead to choose between the original item and a new item which controls for response biases and task demands. If misleading information impairs subjects’ ability to remember the original information, then misled subjects should perform more poorly than control subjects. However, if misleading information does not affect memory for the original information, then the control and misled conditions should not differ.

Question 15

what did the ‘modified misinformation effect’ study find? does it support any views?

Answer 15

in the 6 experiments using the modified test control, the misled participants performed at approximately the same level of accuracy suggesting that misinformation had not impaired original memory trace. The findings support the view that both the original information and the PEI coexist in memory but people sometimes errantly report post-event information at test even when the original information is available. In an eyewitness situation this can have serious consequences.

Question 16

give an example case of Consequence of a faulty eyewitness testimony in legal cases

Answer 16

In New York City in 1970, Edmond D. Jackson was charged with first degree murder and robbery solely based on the eyewitness testimony of four people. There was no physical, forensic, or confession evidence linking him to the crime yet Jackson was sentenced 20 years to life imprisonment. The police detectives allowed three of those eyewitnesses to see Jackson before they viewed him in a lineup, from which they selected him as one of the gunmen.Unsurprisingly, 8 years later the court found that the eyewitness testimony was not reliable due to suggestive police procedures and Jackson was freed (Loftus, 1979).

Question 17

what are the consequences of witnesses who knowingly give faulty reports in legal cases?

Answer 17

The effects of erroneous reports on criminal investigations can be so pervasive that state and federal statutes incorporate provisions for charging with felonies witnesses who knowingly make such reports. However, far too many witnesses give erroneous reports unknowingly, misled by poor police procedures and their own misjudgement of the reliability of human memory. Due to consequences such as false imprisonment, memory researchers are keen to understand memory errors, and when they are most likely to occur.

Question 18

Who provided supporting evidence for the Source Monitoring Framework?

Answer 18

Lindsay and Johnson (1989b)

Question 19

what did Lindsay and Johnson (1989a) find?

Answer 19

Lindsay and Johnson (1989a) found that a suggestibility effect obtained with a yes/no recognition test was absent among participants tested on a SM test that required them to specify the source (visual event, narrative, both, or neither) of each test item.

Question 20

How did Lindsay and Johnson interpreted their findings?

Answer 20

Lindsay and Johnson interpreted these findings as evidence that the SM test encouraged participants to attend to source-specifying memory information, thereby enhancing their ability to differentiate between memories of the target visual event versus memories of the verbal information.

Question 21

Converging evidence to Lindsay and Johnson’s study?

Answer 21

Converging evidence for that conclusion came from Zaragoza and Lane (1994, Experiment 2), in which suggestibility effects were reduced but not eliminated by a SM test as opposed to yes/no test. Zaragoza and Lane (1994) found that presenting suggestions in ways that encourage participants to encode them elaboratively and in integration with event memories increased reports of suggestions on a subsequent SM test.

Question 22

Converging evidence to Lindsay and Johnson’s study?

Answer 22

Converging evidence for that conclusion came from Zaragoza and Lane (1994, Experiment 2), in which suggestibility effects were reduced but not eliminated by a SM test as opposed to yes/no test. Zaragoza and Lane (1994) found that presenting suggestions in ways that encourage participants to encode them elaboratively and in integration with event memories increased reports of suggestions on a subsequent SM test.

Question 23

what did Lindsay (1990) change from the Lindsay and Johnson’s study? what are the findings?

Answer 23

Lindsay (1990) adapted Jacoby et al., (1989) logic of opposition procedure to assess source memory. They told participants that any information in the post-event narrative that was being asked about was wrong. Consistent with the SM framework, under conditions that made it easy for participants to differentiate memories of the narrative from memories of the event, these instructions enabled participants to avoid reporting suggestions, but under conditions that made SM difficult participants often intruded suggestions despite the opposition instructions.

Question 24

describe Source Monitoring Framework

Answer 24

Source Monitoring Framework may shed some light on the issue, it is a theoretical account of memory that describes how people identify the source of a memory, and why errors can occur. It also suggests that monitoring decisions are based in part on the qualities of the retrieved memories. One of the key ideas behind source-monitoring is that a person’s memory records are activated and evaluated through processes (heuristic and systematic); through these processes, a memory is attributed to a source. The heuristic process which reflects an assessment of the activation of memory records, if anything prevents encoding the contextual details of an event while it happens, relevant information will not be fully retrieved and errors will occur. In contrast, the systematic process reflects more complex judgments such as deciding if the memory is consistent with the subject’s general knowledge.

Question 25

How are source attribution made?

Answer 25

Source attributions are often made automatically using heuristic based decisions (faster, less-attention demanding), for example, errors based on heuristic judgements might be based on the speed at which something comes to mind, or the vividness of the memory, that trick the person into thinking it’s a real memory as opposed to a suggestion.Thus, being able to recall a memory does not guarantee its authenticity. Source-monitoring errors can occur when the heuristic judgement process, based on the expected memory characteristics, is wrong. Research shows that the harder it is to retrieve specific source information, the more we make source-monitoring errors.