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factors affecting eyewitness testimony - Coggle Diagram
factors affecting eyewitness testimony
definitions
EWT - the ability of people to remember the details of events such as crimes and accidents which they themselves have observed
misleading information
- incorrect information given to the eyewitness usually after the event aka, post-event situation. it can take place in many forms such as leading questions or post-event discussion
leading question
- a question which, because of the way that it is phrased, suggests a certain answer
post event discussion
- talking about the event, usually with other eyewitnesses, after it has taken place which could compromise the accuracy of the testimony
research into leading questions - Loftus and Palmer
aim - to investigate the effect of misleading information on EWT
procedure - 45 students were shown seven different films of different traffic accidents. they were given questionnaires after watching with one critical question which contained for one of five verbs: contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed and were asked how fast the car was going
results - the leading question affected the response given -
smashed
= 40.8mph and
contacted
= 31.8mph
conclusion - the wording of the question had encouraged participants to change their response (response bias) -
the wording of the question doesn't affect memory but influences how the participants describe an answer
Loftus and Palmer experiment 2
aim - to examine the effect of misleading information on EWT
procedure - 150 student participants in 3 groups of 50 viewed a video of a car crash. they were given a questionnaire asking "
how fast were the cars going when they ... into each other?
" - group 1 was asked the question containing the word
hit
, group 2 with the word
smashed
and, group 3 had no misleading question. a week later, participants were asked to return and answer more questions eg "
did you see the broken glass?
" even though there was none
results - the participants who thought the car
"smashed"
were more likely to report broken glass
conclusion - this demonstrates the substitute explanation -
the wording of the question can actually change participants memory
post event discussion
this occurs when there is more than one witness to an event - Witnesses may discuss what they saw with co-witnesses. this may influence accuracy
Gabbert et al showed pairs of participants different videos of the same event, one participant viewing unique items. the pairs in one condition were encouraged to discuss the event before individually recalling events -
71% of witnesses who discusses went on to mistakenly recall items, 0% in the control group mistook items
evaluation
strength - a strength of all misleading information is that it has useful real life applications. Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eye witnesses. Psychologists believe they can make an important difference to the lives of real people with research into EWT.
limitation - this research tells us little about how leading questions affect EWT in the real world. this is because of the task itself and the lack of consequence involved in the task. Loftus and Palmers participants watched clips of car accidents which is very difference to witnessing a real accident as the clips lack the stress of a real accident. there is evidence that emotions have an impact on memory. this is a limitation because studies that use artificial tasks may tell us little about the impact of leading questions
limitation - there are individual differences in the accuracy of EWT. for example Anastasi and Rhodes found that people in the age groups 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than people who were aged 55-78. research studies often use younger people as the target to identify, meaning some age groups appear less accurate but this is not necessarily true
limitation - many answers participants give in lab studies of EWT are the result of demand characteristics. participants usually do not want to let the researcher down and want to appear more helpful and attentive so they sometimes guess when they don't know an answer to a question. this decreases the validity of the results as the participants are less accurate