Eyewitness testimony

• Misleading information


  When people accept misleading information after an event and absorb it into their memory for the actual event

  tendancy to accept increases as time since event increases
• questioning methods that affect EWT accuracy 


  Leading questions

  post event discussion
• Leading questions 


  A question posed to a witness that encourages them to answer in a particular way
• Post event discussion

  When co witnesses to a crime discuss it with eachother their EWT may become contaminated becaus ethey combine their memories with others
• Explainations for leading questions

  Response bias- they affect the answers given but dont affect the actual memory of event. The answer is given because the question suggests that answer

  Substitution- suggests that the leading questio affect the recall of the memory and distort the memory of event
• Leading question experiment

  Loftus and Palmer-

  45 students shown seven films of car accidents and after answered questions on it. They used the critical question about “ how fast the cars were going when they **** each other?” Substituting the adjective

  The verb used significantly affected speed estimates eg “smashed” produced highest estimate
• Explanations for post event discussion

  Memory contamination - the memory is changed because of new information being mixed with the original memory

  Memory conformity - doesnt effect the actual memory itself but instead people change their answers to conform
• Post event discussion experiment

  Gabbert et al -

  used 60 uni students and 60 older adults showing them two videos of the same event but from different angles. they had to complete a questionnaire on the video but one group had time to discuss first

  71% of people who got to dicuss reported info they hadnt seen
• Evaluation of factors affecting EWT : Strengths

  High internal validity - the resaerch is carried out in highly controlled conditions as all participants had the exact same conditions

  more confident in establishing the cause and effect
• Evaluation of factors affecting EWT : Limitations

  Low ecological validity: both experiments use artificial events

  were told to pay close attention whereas in a real life situation you wouldnt know to pay attention
• Other factors affect EWT

  Anxiety - witnessing a crime most likely triggers a high level of anxiety affected the memory
• Yerkes Dodson theory


  Suggestd that performance is related to arousal. so when seeing a violent crime that causes high arousal and therefore can effect our memories
• Explainations for anxiety

  Tunnel theory- when a weapon is involved in the crime it causes anxiety which focuses all our attention on the weapon so we are not paying attention to the crime

  Fight and flight - bodys reaction to a highly stressful situation, improves alertness and we become more aware of the cues in the situation
• EWT anxiety experiment

  Johnson and Scott - participants listened to what they thought was a genuine exchange of either two situations eg knife or pen