Eyewitness testimony

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    Khads <3

    Cards (45)

    • What is eyewitness testimony and what is an eyewitness?
      + an account of an event from an individual's memory
      + eyewitnesses are individuals who give evidence in court concerning the identity of crime offenders
    • Who wanted looked into leading questions and what did they want to investigate?
      + Loftus and Plamer (1974)
      + wanted to investigate the accuracy of memory after witnessing an event to see the effect of leading questions on the accuracy of immediate recall
    • What was the procedure of Loftus and Plamer's study on leading questions?
      + 45 participants (5 groups of nine) were shown seven clips of a car accident and participants were given questions after the clip with one critical question
      + The critical question was 'How fast were the cars going when they ____ each other'
      + five different verbs were used: 'smashed', 'collided', 'bumped', 'contacted', 'hit'
    • What were the results and conclusions of Loftus and Palmer's study on leading questions?
      + mean estimate speed for smashed => 40.8 mph
      + mean estimate speed for contacted => 31.8 mph
      + leading question biased eyewitness recall of event
    • What is the response-bias explanation for why people are prone to being affected by leading questions?
      + tendency for interviewees to respond in the same way to all questions
      + bias their answers
      + getting the word 'smashed' may have encouraged ppts to choose a higher speed estimate
    • What is the substitution explanation for why people are prone to being affected by leading questions?
      + inaccurate eyewitness recall
      + misleading questions replace the original memory
      + critical verb altered the memory of the incident
      + participants who heard the verb 'smashed' were then later more likely to say there was broken class than those who heard 'hit'
    • What are the problems with post-event discussion?

      + occurs when there is more than one witness to an event
      + witnesses may discuss what they have seen
      + may influence the accuracy of each witnesses' recall of event
    • What did Gabbert and colleagues do and when?
      + 2003
      + participants watch a video of the same crime from different angles
      + each ppt could see elements of the event that other participants could not see
      + only one participants could see the title of the book carried by a young woman
      + both participants discussed with each other what they saw and then completed a recall test alone
    • What did Gabbert and colleagues find?
      + 71% of ppt mistakenly recalled aspects they did not see but picked up in discussion
      + 0% in control group
    • What is memory conformity?
      witnesses go along with each other for social approval or because they believe other witnesses are right
    • What are the real-world applications of EWT research?
      + Loftus (1975) believes that leading questions can distort memory
      + police officers must be careful in how they phrase questions
      + research into EWT can positively impact society e.g. improving the legal system
    • What is the limitation of the tasks investigating EWT being artificial?
      + film clips of car accidents were artificial and very different to experiencing a real car accident
      + lacks the stress experienced in real car accidents
      + evidence suggests that emotion such as anxiety can have an effect on EWT
    • What are the individual differences regarding eyewitness recall?

      + older people have worse EWT than those who are younger as shown from evidence
      + Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) found that people aged 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than those aged 55-78 years
      + all age groups are more accurate when identifying people of the same age group (age bias)
      + research usually uses younger people to be identified
      + may mean other age groups appear less accurate, but they aren't when identifying their own age group
    • What did Zaragosa and McCloskey say in regards to demand characteristics in EWT studies?
      + many answers in lab studies are due to demand characteristics
      + ppts do not want to let researcher down and want to appear helpful so may guess answers to be helpful
      + may try to work out what is expected of them using cues in the procedure
      + may be measuring the ability of ppts to second guess the hypothesis and not the accuracy of EWT which decreases the validity of the research studies
    • What did Foster et al find and when?
      1994
      + points out that what you remember as EW has conseqeunces in the real world and not in labs
      + no matter what ppts answer there is no significant effect
      + leading questions may have less effect on the accuracy of EWT when the consequences are more serious
      + lab studies may underestimate the accuracy of EWT
    • What is anxiety?
      + state of emotional and physical arousal with emotions including worried thoughts and feelings of tension
      + physical changes include increased heart rate and sweatiness
      + normal reaction to stressful situations, but can affect accuracy and detail of EWT
    • What is the weapon focus effect?
      + when witnesses focus on weapon held by perpetrator, taking attention away from other aspects of situation so less well recalled
      + anxiety creates physiological arousal in body
      + prevents paying attention to important cues, so recall worse
    • What is the tunnel theory of memory?
      + in stressful situations, our attention narrows to focus on one aspect of situation as if we had tunnel vision
      + EWT less accurate for all aspects of situation
      + except most pertinent, which may be a weapon and not person
    • What is the fight or flight response?
      + stressful event raises physiological arousal
      + preparing body for fight or flight
      + physiological arousal increases alertness
      + improves memory for an event as we become more aware of cues in situation
    • What is the Yerkes-Dodson law (1908)?
      + relationship between emotional arousal and performance represents and inverted 'u'
      + moderate stress/anxiety associated with optimum performance
      + high or low levels of stress are associated with poor performance
    • What does the Yerkes-Dodson law explain?
      + explains why some research shows negative relationship between anxiety and EWT
      + other research shows positive relationship between them
      + most accurate witnessing takes place under medium levels of anxiety/ stress
    • What are the three stages of processing and important event?
      + encoding - perception or original event
      + storage - time between event and recollection
      + retrieval - recall of stored information
    • Which research shows the effect of factors on the retrieval stage?
      + expectations: telephone game - Allport and Postman
      + Mis-remembering: mis-remembering and the Just Desserts Cade
      + Misinformation Effect: Loftus
    • Describe Yuille and Cutshall's research procedure.
      + In 1986
      + showed that witnesses of real-life incident (gun shooting) outside fun shop in Canada had accurate memories
      + stressful event involving weapons
      + thief stole guns and money, shot six times and died
      + police interviewed witnesses and 13 re-interviewed five months later
    • Describe the findings of Yuille and Cutshall's research.
      + recall accurate even after five months
      + two misleading questions inserted by researcher had no effect on recall accuracy
      + ppts who reported highest stress levels most accurate (88%) compared to 75% for less stressed
    • Which two important points can be taken from Yuille and Cutshall's work?
      + cases of real-life recall where memory for anxious/ stressful events is accurate, even seven months later
      + misleading questions need not have same effect as found in lab studies (e.g. Loftus and Palmer)
    • Describe Johnson and Scott's study.
      + 1976
      + volunteers in lab setting witness row in low anxiety (no weapon) or high anxiety (bloody knife)
      + medium external validity -> artificial setting, but stage as real-life event
      + low anxiety associated with high EWT accuracy
      + Anxiety proven to have a negative effect on recall
    • Discuss Johnson and Scott's study.
      + High internal validity due to good control over variables
      + Induced anxiety causes ethical issues
      + Study may test surprise rather than anxiety
    • Describe Parker et al's study?
      + 2006
      + Interviewed those affected by hurricane and saw if there was a relationship between memory of events and amount of damage to homes (measure of anxiety)
      + high external validity as participants experience real anxiety in real-life setting
      + moderate levels of anxiety associated with high accuracy of EWT
      + anxiety can have negative or positive effect on recall depending on how extreme it is
    • Discuss Parker et al's study?
      + investigated all levels of anxiety including moderate, enabling better understanding of relationship between anxiety and witness recall
      + anxiety is operationalised, but may not reflect experience anxiety (amount of damage done to homes)
    • Describe Valentine and Mesout (2009)?
      + visitors to home labyrinth divided into low and high anxiety based on heart monitor
      + asked to describe individual encountered in labyrinth
      + some anxiety associated with high EWT accuracy
      + anxiety has negative effect on recall
    • Discuss Valentine and Mesuot (2009) study.
      + fairly high external validity, real-life setting
      + two measures of anxiety incl. heart monitor -> accurate measurement
      + quasi-experiment so no random allocations to conditions
      + participant variables may be confounding variables
    • Describe Loftus et al (1978) study.

      + Participants witness car accident at junction where there was a stop sign
      + after film of accident half given information that sop sign was a yield (give way sign)
      + those given yield sign information more likely to recall yield sign
      + other half more likely to be accurate and remember stop sign
    • What are the individual differences found from Areh?
      + looked at gender relayed differences in EWT and females more reliable witnesses than males
      + males more confident but less correct
      + generally thought that there were small gender differences and women tend to be better at facial recognition and have better episodic memory
      + idea that gender affects EWT is useful
    • What are the methodology points in Loftus and Palmer's study?
      Lab experiment, replicated many times, real-life setting, ppts aware of study, Sampling of US college students
    • What did Loftus and Zanni do and when?
      + 1975
      + showed participants a film of a car accident and some ppts were asked 'Did you see a broken headlight?' and others asked 'Did you see the broken headlight?'
    • What did Loftus and Zanni find?
      7% of those asked in the first condition reported seeing a broken headlight, whereas 17% asked about the headlight reported seeing one even though it was not present in the video
    • How does Loftus and Zanni's experiment refute Loftus and Palmer's experiment?
      + judging speed is complex and participants are more prone to be led by leading questions
      + this research demonstrates that leading questions can cause participants to remember something that was not there
      + however, it provides more evidence for effect on leading questions
    • Which experiment did Loftus do in 1979 and what did he find?
      + showed ppts series of pictures of a man stealing a red wallet from a woman's bag
      + 98% of participants were able to identify the colour directly and he later used leading questions to attempt to alter their recall
      + participants till persisted in describing the purse as red
    • How does Loftus' (1979) experiment contradict the results from Loftus and Palmer's (1966) study?

      + the research contradicts Loftus and Palmer as it suggests that in some circumstances, leading questions have a limited effect on memory
      + it may be that information to be remembered in this study was less subjective than estimating speed
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