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What is eyewitness testimony?
The ability of people to remember the details of events, such as accidents and crimes, which they themselves have oberved. Accuracy of EWT can be affected by factors such as misleading information and anxiety.
What is misleading information?
Incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after the event. It can take may forms such as leading questions and post-event dicussion.
What is a leading question?
A question which, because of the way it isphrased, suggests a certain answer.
What is post-event discussion?
It occurs when there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or with other people. This may influence the accuracy of each witness’s recall of the event.
Why are leading questions a particular issue for eyewitness testimony?
Because police questions may ‘direct‘ a witnes to gove a particular answer.
What research is there on leading questions?
The study of Loftus and Palmer.
What is the procedure of Loftus and Palmer?
They arranged for 45 participants to watch film clips of car accidents and asked them questions about the accident. In the critical (leading) question, participants were asked to describe how far the cars where going. There were five groups of participantss and each group was given a different verb in the critical queation: hit, contacted, collided, smashed.
What were the findings of Loftus and Palmer?
The mean estimated speed was calculated for each participant group. The verb contacted had a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph. The verb smashed had a mean speed of 40.5mph - the leading question biased the eyewitnesses recall of an event.
What does the response bias explaination say about the effect of leading questions on EWT?
It suggests that the wording of the question has no real effect on the participants’ memories, but just influences how they decide to answer.
What is the substitution explaination of the effect of leading questions on EWT?
This proposes that the wording of a leading question changes the participant’s memory of the film clip. The critical vern altered their memory of the incident.
What research is there on post-event discussion?
The research of Gabbert et al.
What was the procedure of Gabbert et al.?
They studied participants in pairs. Each participant watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view, meaning that each participant could see elements in the event that the other could not. Both participnts discussed what they had seen before individually completing test of recall.
What were the findins of gabbert et al.?
The researchers found that 71% of the participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the dicussion. In a control group, it was 0%, showing memory conformity.
What are the two eplainations for why post event discusiion affects EWT?
Memory contamination and memory conformity.
What is memory contamination?
When co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, their eyewitness testimonies may become altered or distorted. This is because they combine (mis)information from other witnesses with their own memories.
What is memory conformity?
When witnesses go along with each other either to win social approval ot because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong. unlike with memory contamination, the actual memory is unchanged.
What is the strength of the misleading information arguement?
Real world application.
How is real-world application a strength of misleading questions?
It has important practical uses in the criminal justice sytem. The consequeces of inaccurate EWT can be very serious. Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions while interviewing eyewitnesses. Psychologists are sometimes asked to act as expert witnesses in court trials and explain the limits of EWT to juries.
What does real world application show about misleading information show?
That psycologists can help to improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty conviictions based on unreliable EWT.
What is the counterpoint to the real world application?
Practical applications of EWT may be affected by issues with research. Forinstance, Loftus and Palmer’s participants watched film clips in a lab, a very different experience from witnessing a real event. Fster et al. also points out that what eyewitnesses remember irl have consequences while there are none in the lab.
What does the counterpoint to the real world application suggest about misleading questions?
That researchers such as Loftus are too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information - EWT may be more dependable than many studies suggest.
What are the limitations to misleading information?
Evidence against substitution.
Evidence challenging memory conformity.
How is evidence against substitution a limitation of misleading information?
EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than others. Sutherland and Payne showerd participants a video clip. When partici[pants were later asked misleading questions, thwir recall was more accurate for the central details of the event than the prephiral ones. Presumable, the participants attention was focused on central features of the event and these memories were relatively resistsnt to misleading information.
What does the evidence against substitution suggest about misleading information?
That the original memories for central details survived and were not distorted, an outcome that is not predicted by the substitution explaination.
How is evidence challenging memory conformity a limiation of misleading information?
Tere is evidence that post-event discussion actually alters EWT. Skagerberg ang Wright showed their participants film clips. There were two versions, amuggers hair was dark brown in one and light brown in the other. Participants discussed the clips in pairs, each having seen different versions. They often did not report what they had seen, but a blend of the two (the hair as medium brown).
What does the evidence against memory conformity suggest about misleading information?
That the memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post-event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformity.
What have lab studies identified misleading information as a cause if?
Innacurate, EWT, partly by being able to control variables.
What doo Zaragoza and McCloskey argue?
That many answers given by participants inlab studies are due to demand characteristics. Participants usually want to be helpful and not let the researcher down so they guess when they are asked a question they do not know the answer to.
