Eye Witness Testimonies

EWT, Weapon Focus and Post Event Info

What is an EWT?

An eye witness testimony is where a witness to a crime retells what they saw and what occurred.

Why is reliability important?

Inaccurate EWT can lead to police gaining wrong information which can then lead to the wrong person being convicted and sent to prison so the real criminal is still at large and a risk to society.

@@E.g Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson@@

**EWT -** ✅ Loftus & Palmer

Leading questions distort memory of an EWT. The changing of a verb led to ppts having different answers in regards to speed of the car despite seeing the same clip.

Smashed = 40.5mph

**EWT -** ❌ Loftus + Palmer - Low in ecological validity

Done in a lab environment. This is not a way in which people would be presented with an event in which they would have to later recall in real life. Also excludes the extraneous variables that would most likely be there when watching an event.

**EWT -** ✅ Weapon Focus - Valentine and Mesout

Weapons increase the induction of anxiety so decreases the attention given by EW. Did this by conducting an experiment in a dungeon with a pre and post questionnaire, where the walked through with the addition of weapons. Therefore, testimony is less accurate.

**EWT -** ❌ Valentine and Mesout - Low in validity

Lack of control of extraneous variables so a definite cause and effect relationship cannot be made as there may have been other things that caused or played a part in the induction of anxiety therefore causing the lack of attention.

**EWT -** ✅ Reconstructive Memory - War of Ghosts

Bartlett conducted an experiment where he told a group of people a ghost story where he asked ppts to recall it back to him over a period of time. Over time, the story got shorter and changed it to fit into their own experiences and expectations.

**EWT -** ❌ Yuille + Cutshall

6 months after a school shooting, students were asked to recall what happened and everyone was able to recount what happened exactly as it did, highlighting reliability of EWT.

APPLICATION OF EWT

Find ways to get a more reliable EWT.

What is Weapon Focus?

Refers to concentration of a crimes witness’s attention on a weapon makes the witness have a reduction in the ability to remember other details of the crime such as the appearance of the criminal.

1. Stress/Threat in Weapon Focus

**Yerkes and Dodson Effect** - Increase in arousal improves performance but only up until a certain point when it then begins to decline leading to poorer recall.

**Threatening effect** to witnesses causing them to focus on the weapon.

2. Attention and Unusualness

As threat increases, attention becomes more selective due to immediate threat in forefront of minds.

Weapons are unusual as they are not the typical things that would be seen in everyday life so focus upon it when we see it.

If weapon is unusual, recall tends to be better.

**Weapon Focus** - ✅ Johnson + Scott

Ppts ‘waiting’ for experiment to start. See a man leave a room with a pen. Then overheard an argument and saw man leave room with a knife covered in blood. 49% identified man with pen but only 33% with the knife.

**Weapon Focus -** ❌ Low ecological validity

Not way in which people would be exposed to weapons in real life so may not apply to real life.

**Weapon Focus** - ✅ Valentine + Mesout

Weapons increase the induction of anxiety so decreases the attention given by EW. Did this by conducting an experiment in a dungeon with a pre and post questionnaire, where the walked through with the addition of weapons. Therefore, testimony is less accurate.

**Weapon Focus -** ❌ Valentine and Mesout - Low in validity

Lack of control of extraneous variables so a definite cause and effect relationship cannot be made as there may have been other things that caused or played a part in the induction of anxiety therefore causing the lack of attention.

**Weapon Focus** - ✅ Johnson + Scott is reliable

Standardised procedure

**Weapon Focus -** ❌ Not only influence

Also have factors like leading questions, post event information can distort your memory.

**Weapon Focus** - ✅ Valentine and Mesout applicable findings

Findings more applicable to everyday life

**Weapon Focus -** ❌ Opposing Research

Yuille + Cutshall

APPLICATION of Weapon Focus

Train cashiers, bankers to focus on attention to detail rather than the weapon in high anxiety situations.

What is Post Event Information?

Often witnesses are interviewed over a period of time and experiences during this time could effect the witnesses memory.

Encounter info from other witnesses, police and media

Results in inaccuracies in recall - confabulation

Misinformation

Refers to tendency for post event info to interfere with the memory of the original event.

Once a person believes something, it is difficult to alter it.

People remember misinformation but can’t remember where they heard it from so think it is something that actually happened.

2. Schemas and Reconstructive Memory

Schemas are parcels of knowledge.

Reconstructive memory is the ability for new info to reconstruct what you remember

Transformation

Changing memory to fit own individual knowledge and expectations.

Simplification

Shortening the story every time

Confabulating

Creating a completely false story

Rationalisation

Changing the order of the story

3. Leading Questions

Questions that lead witnesses to believe that something did or did not occur.

Want a desired answer

Distorts a witnesses memory

Wording can easily alter memory

**Post Info** - ✅ Barlett - War of Ghosts

Bartlett conducted an experiment where he told a group of people a ghost story where he asked ppts to recall it back to him over a period of time. Over time, the story got shorter and changed it to fit into their own experiences and expectations.

**Post Info -** ❌ Barlett - Low Ecological Validity

Not representative of how memory is used in real life scenarios as it is an artificial task.

**Post Info** - ✅ Loftus and Palmer - Leading Questions

Leading critical question of ‘how fast was the car going when the (verb) into each other’. Verbs of smashed, hit, bumped, collided and contacted. Smashed had an average mph of 40.5 and collided 31.8 despite watching the same clip, showing how leading questions distort memory.

**Post Info -** ❌ Other factors that can distort memory.

Not just post event information that causes distortion of memory, also weapon focus.

**Post Info** - ✅ Allport and Postman

Pic of white man holding a razor to a black man was shown to white and black ppts separately and they were asked to describe it. White ppts said it was a black man holding the razor to a white man. This shows memory is an active process where we use our own expectations and not what actually occurred.

**Post Info -** ❌ Opposing - Yuille + Cutshall

6 months after a school shooting, students were asked to recall what happened and everyone was able to recount what happened exactly as it did, highlighting reliability of EWT.

APPLICATION of Post Event Info

Used within the law - avoid using leading questions during police interviews and when testifying in court.