Factors affecting eyewitness testimony

• What is eyewitness testimony?

  Ability to remember crime details
• What does an eyewitness do?


  Provides evidence and identifies perpetrator
• Who conducted the study on leading questions in 1974?

  Loftus and Palmer
• What was the mean estimated speed for "contacted" in Loftus and Palmer's study?

  31.8 mph
• What was the mean estimated speed for "smashed" in Loftus and Palmer's study?

  40.5 mph
• How did leading questions affect eyewitness recall in Loftus and Palmer's study?

  They biased the eyewitness' recall
• What is the responsive-bias explanation in eyewitness testimony?

  Wording influences how participants respond
• What does the substitution explanation suggest?

  Wording changes participants' memory
• What is post-event discussion?

  Discussion of an event among witnesses
• How can post-event discussion affect eyewitness testimony?

  It may contaminate their recall accuracy
• Who conducted the study in 2003 on eyewitness testimony?

  Gabbert et al.
• What was the design of Gabbert et al.'s study?

  Participants watched different viewpoints of a crime
• What percentage of participants in Gabbert et al.'s study mistakenly recalled unseen aspects?

  71%
• What was the result for the control group in Gabbert et al.'s study?

  0% recalled unseen aspects
• How does post-event discussion influence eyewitness testimony according to Gabbert et al.?

  It leads to contamination of recall accuracy
• Why is misleading information useful for real life applications?

  • It has hugely practical use in the real world, where the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be serious
  • Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting impact on memory, so police officers have to phrase questions carefully
  • Can improve the legal system
• Why are there individual differences for misleading differences?

  • Evidence that older people are less accurate than young people when giving eyewitness reports
  • Rhodes found that people aged 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than those aged 55-78
  • All age groups are accurate; younger groups are better to use for EWT
• What is anxiety defined as in the study material?

  State of emotional and physical arousal
• What does anxiety include according to the study material?

  Worried thoughts, feelings, and tension
• How does anxiety affect recall of eyewitnesses?

  It creates physiological arousal, impairing attention
• What is the negative effect of anxiety on recall?

  Prevents attention to important cues, worsening recall
• What is the positive effect of anxiety mentioned in the study material?

  Triggers fight or flight response, improving alertness
• What was the sample size in Christianson and Hubinette's study?

  58 witnesses
• What types of witnesses were included in Christianson and Hubinette's study?

  Onlookers/customers and bank employees
• What was the accuracy of recall for the robbery details in the study?

  Better than 75% accurate recall
• Who had the best recall of the robbery details according to the study?

  Witnesses who were most anxious
• What is the Tunnel Effect in eyewitness testimony?

  • Witness attention narrows to focus on a weapon
  • This focus negatively affects overall recall
  • Known as the weapon-focus effect
• What does the Yerkes-Dodson Law state about performance and arousal?

  Performance improves with arousal, then declines
• What happens to performance as arousal increases according to the Yerkes-Dodson Law?

  It improves up to a point, then declines
• What is the relationship between anxiety and memory recall based on the study material?

  High anxiety can enhance memory recall
• Weapon focus effect may not be relevant to anxiety. Explain

  • Pikel conducted an experiment using scissors, handgun, wallet and raw chicken in a hairdressing salon video
  • Eyewitness accuracy was significantly lower in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun)
  • Suggests that the weapon-focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety
• There are ethical issues in lab studies regarding anxiety

  • Creating anxiety in people is risky as it subjects people to psychological harm
  • Psychologists use those who have trauma
  • The issue does not challenge findings from research studies such as Johnson
  • It's used to compare findings with less controlled field studies so benefits may outweigh issues
• What is the cognitive interview method used for?

  To help eyewitnesses retrieve accurate memories
• How many techniques are used in the cognitive interview?

  Four techniques
• What is the first technique of the cognitive interview?

  Report everything
• How should a witness use the 'report everything' technique?

  Recall every detail, even trivial ones
• What does 'reinstate the context' involve?

  Imagining the crime scene and environment
• What is the purpose of reversing the order of events in recall?

  To disrupt expectations and schema effects
• Why is changing perspective important in the cognitive interview?

  It helps prevent schema-based recall errors
• How do schemas affect eyewitness recall?

  Schemas generate expectations that distort recall