eyewitness testimony

• Misleading information


  Information that may lead or mislead a witness to give a particular answer
• Research on leading questions
• Leading questions


  1. When you are asked a question, the wording of the question may lead or mislead you to give a particular answer

  2. This is a particular issue for eyewitness testimony (EWT) because police questions may lead a witness to give a particular answer
• Response-bias explanation


  The wording of the question has no actual effect on the participant's memories, but just influences how they decide to answer
• Substitution explanation


  The wording of a leading question changes the participant's memory of the film clip
• Research on post-event discussion
• Memory contamination


  When co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, their eyewitness testimonies may become altered or distorted
• Memory conformity


  Witnesses go along with each other either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong
• Evidence against substitution explanation
• Evidence challenging memory conformity
• Demand characteristics
• The effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony
• Weapon focus


  Anxiety created by the presence of a weapon leads to a focus on the weapon, reducing a witness's recall for other details of the event
• Yerkes-Dodson Law


  The relationship between emotional arousal and performance follows an inverted U-shaped curve, where moderate arousal leads to optimal performance