Unit 1 - Memory EWT Flashcards
What is EyeWitness Testimony (EWT)?
The evidence given incourt or some police investigation by someone who has witnessed a crime or accident.
What is a leading question?
A question phrased in such a way as to prompt a partciular kind of answer.
Describe a study into leading questions/ misleading infomation.
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Aim: To see the effect of misleading information on recall of an event.
Method: Participants were shown a film of a car accident. Then they were spilt into 5 conditions and were asked to answer the critical question regarding the speed of the cars. One word was changed for each variation – how fast were the cars going when they… smashed/collided/bumped/hit/contacted.
Results: The wording of the accident affected how the participants remembered the accident: Smashed (41mph) compared to Contacted (32mph).
Conclusion: The words used when questioning an eyewitness can significantly affect their answers.
Loftus and Zanni
They carried out a similar experiment involving a clip of a car accident and asked to different questions: Did you see the broken headlight? Or Did you see a broken headlight? There was in fact no broken headlight.
7% of participants asked about A broken headlight reported seeing one while in comparison 17% asked about THE broken headlight said they saw one.
This implies that misleading information leads to inaccurate EWTs.
Describe one study into anxiety imparing the accuracy of EWT.
Loftus (1979)
Aim: To see how anxiety will affect the accuracy of EWT.
Method: Participant were asked to sit in a reception area. There were two conditions. In the first they heard a quiet discussion in a room next door and then a confederate emerged holding a pen in a greasy hand, he uttered a single comment on passing. The second they heard a heated argument then a confederate emerged with a knife covered in blood, he uttered a single comment. Participants were then asked to identify the man from 50 photographs.
Results: The man was correctly identified 49% of the time when holding the pen but only 33% of the time when holding the knife.
Conclusion: when there is the presence of a weapon people’s attention is drawn to the weapon (this is why memory of the person holding the weapon id poor), this is called weapon focus. Weapon focus happens due to the anxiety a weapon causes making peripheral details draw less attention so producing less accurate recall of them.
Describe one study into anxiety impairing the accuracy of EWT.
Valentine and Mesout (2008)
Aim: To see how stress in the London Dungeon will affect the accuracy of EWT.
Method: 56 visitors to the London Dungeon were offered a reduction in price if the agreed to complete a questionnaire after their visit. They range from 18-54, 9 were female and 27 male. They entered the “Horror Labyrinth” attraction where they encounter a “scary person” blocking there path. 45 minutes later when they left the attraction informed consent was obtained and they completed a state anxiety inventory (SAI) which help determine their levels of anxiety. Next they completed a questionnaire on the memory of the “scary person”, it involved free recall, cued recall, and a 9 photograph line up.
Results: eyewitness identification was dramatically impairs by the level of anxiety experienced. Only 17% of participants who scored above median on the SAI correctly identified the “scary person” whereas 75% of the participants who scored below median SAI correctly identified the “scary person”. Furthermore females scored high on SAI than males.
Conclusion: It support the idea that high levels of physiological activation and cognitive anxiety impair EW memories. It was also concluded that this research suggests that lab studies underestimate the levels of stress in real life scenarios.
Describe one study into anxiety NOT impairing the accurcy of EWT.
Christian and Hubinette (1993)
They conducted a natural experiment in which they questioned 110 real witnessed to 22 real bank robberies. They found that witnesses that had been threaten in some way (high emotional arousal) were more accurate in the recall of details than those who had been on lookers (lower emotional arousal). They concluded that people are very good at remembering high stressful events in real life rather than artificial surroundings.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
Police interviewed witnesses to a crime immediately and re-interviewed 13 of them 5 months later. The crime was a man stealing guns and money in Canada then he was shot six times and died. Recall was found to be accurate even after a long time and misleading questions had no effect (different from what is found in lab experiments e.g. Loftus and Palmer). However, the witnesses who experienced the highest levels of stress were actually closer to the event so this may have helped with the accuracy of memory recall.
Describe one study into the accuracy of a child witness.
Goodman and Reed (1986)
Aim: to see the effect of young age on the accuracy EWT.
Method: They had 3 groups of 16 participants aged 3, 6, or 22. They each spent 5 minutes being interviewed by a researcher who stated he was interested in moto-learning and age relations. He asked them questions and taught them a sequence of movements. Then 4-5 days later they were told the true purpose and were asked to: complete a questionnaire contain leading and non-leading questions, free recall everything they could about the interview, identify the man from a line-up of 5 photos.
Results: The 3 year olds were less accurate in their recall and were affected more by leading questions compared to the 6 and 22 year olds.
Conclusion: The accuracy of EWT is worse the younger we are.
Describe one study into the suggestibility of a child witness.
King and Yuille (1987)
Aim: to see effect of young age on susceptibility to leading questions.
Method: There were 3 different age groups: 6, 9 and 16 years old. An event was set up in which a stranger entered the room and checked some plants then remarked it was late. Later the children were aske on which arm he was wearing the watch (he wasn’t even wearing a watch).
Results: The six year olds were more likely to provide a false response compared to the 9 and 16 year olds.
Conclusion: The younger we are the less resistance we are to false suggestions.
Describe one study into the accuracy of a older witness.
Memon et al (2003)
They studies the accuracy of young (16-33) compared to older (60-82) eyewitnesses. They found when the delay between and incident and recall is short (35 minutes) there was no difference in the accuracy of the two group. However when the delay was long (1 week) the accuracy of the older groups recall was significantly poorer. So concluded that accuracy of EWT decrease with increasing age.
Describe one study into the suggestibility of an older witness.
Cohen and Falkner (1989)
Participants were young adults (35) and older adults (70) they were shown a film of a kidnapping. Ten minutes later they were a written account of the crime, half were accurate and half contained inaccurate information. Later they were tested on their recall of the event. It was found that the elderly participants were much more likely to be influenced by the incorrect information than the younger adults and so were more likely to include some of incorrect information in their own answer. So it was conclude that older adults are more susceptible to false information.
