Valentine and Coxon (1997) The Effect of Age on EWT

Question 1

Method

Answer 1

• 3 groups of participants (children, young adults, and elderly people) watched a video of a kidnapping,
• They were then asked a series of leading and non-leading questions about what they had seen.

Question 2

Results

Answer 2

• Both the elderly people and the children gave more incorrect answers to non-leading questions,
• Children were misled more by leading questions than adults or the elderly.

Question 3

Conclusions

Answer 3

• Age has an effect on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

Question 4

Evaluations

Answer 4

• This has implications in law when children/elderly people are questioned,
• Experiment = artificial; wasn’t as emotionally arousing as the same situations would be in real-life; study lacks ecological validity,
• Results may only show how well people remember things from TV, rather than showing accuracy of memories of real-life situations.