A03 - Memory - Eye Witness Testimony - Misleading Information Flashcards
One strength of the research into eye-witness testimony is real world applications in the criminal justice system.
E – inaccurate eyewitness testimony can have serious consequences.
Loftus (1975) argue that police should be cautious of how to phrase questions to witnesses due to distorting effects.
E – psychologists explain the limits of eyewitness testimony to juries when they’re called in as expert witnesses in trials.
L – therefore, psychologists can improve how the legal system works and can protect innocent people from inaccurate convictions based on unreliable eyewitness testimony.
Counterpoint – Foster et al (1994) argue that participants are less concerned about the effect of responses in a lab study.
Therefore, eyewitness testimony may be stronger in real life situations.
A strength of Loftus & Palmer’s research is that it took place in a laboratory setting, which afforded a high level of control of over the independent, dependent, control and extraneous variables.
E – the car crash videos were staged, so the events that the participants witnessed were highly controlled.
This includes the speed of the collision and the duration, as well as extraneous events, that wouldn’t have been possible with a naturalistic or field study.
The videos were presented in a counterbalanced order across groups to reduce order effects.
E – this high level of control reduces the chances of extraneous variables confounding the manipulation of the independent variable, increasing the internal validity of the results.
Furthermore, the standardisation of procedures and operationalisation of outcomes facilitates replication of the research.
An example of this is with a different population.
L - Therefore, this increases the findings’ internal validity in this study to allow interference in reference to the causality of the independent variable over the dependent variable.
The ecological validity of the findings reported by Loftus & Palmer (1974) may not support generalisation to the population.
E – although the questioning of participants about everyday events like a car crash seems to be a genuine measure of eyewitness testimony, the participants watched the car crash videos and witnessed the events from beginning to end.
E – in car accident reports in everyday life, the witnesses will rarely see the whole event.
They are either involved directly in the event or they see a small part of the event happen in their peripheral vision.
So, the laboratory study lacks mundane realism.
L – therefore, their results don’t reflect everyday car accidents and were unable to conclude if eyewitnesses to real accidents would be susceptible to leading questions in the same way.
The eyewitnesses would have a stronger emotional connection to the event.
A limitation of Loftus & Palmer’s study is that there is a lack of population validity
E - the two of their experiments consisted of 45 and 150 students from the University of Washington.
E – the students were restricted in age range and were less experienced drivers, who may be less accurate at estimating speeds.
L – Therefore, we’re unable to generalise the results to other populations, such as older and experienced drivers as they may be more accurate at judging speeds and are less likely to be susceptible to leading questions.
A limitation of the substitution explanation, which suggests that eyewitness testimony may be distorted such that false memories substitute actual memories of the event, is that there is evidence challenging it.
E – The eyewitnesses in the case of Ronald Cotton gave inaccurate testimonies.
E – This suggests that there are serious repercussions as this led to Cotton’s unjust prison sentence.
L – Therefore, eyewitness testimony should only be generalised with caution as they may have substituted real memories for false ones, which could make eyewitnesses unreliable.
The study reported by Gabbert et al. has good population validity
E – the sample contained 60 students and 60 older adults.
E – This allows for the target population to be larger as they are measuring two different age brackets.
L – Therefore, the results can be generalised to more people as more fall into the target population – which means there’s good population validity.
The results of Gabbert et al. have questionable ecological validity.
E – The control group and co-witness group were given different videos.
E- This could create an unfair result as people in real life situations should understand the whole situation and not just be given a small portion of it.
L – Therefore, this study has questionable validity as it is hard to apply this to everyday life.
Although Gabbert et al.’s results provide an insight into the effect of post‐event discussion on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, we are unable to conclude why the distortion occurs.
E – 60 % of witnesses in the co-witness group said that the girl was guilty, despite not seeing her commit a crime.
E – This could suggest a pressure from the researchers as the participants might’ve used the ‘please you effect’ as they believed that seeing the girl commit a crime was the correct answer.
L – Having said this, there isn’t any evidence backing it up. Therefore, distortion is a mystery as to why it occurs.
A limitation of the memory conformity explanation, which suggests that co-witnesses mix misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories, is that there is evidence challenging it.
E – 71% of the witnesses in the co-witness group said they recalled information that they hadn’t actually seen.
E – This suggests that 29% did recall correct information.
Perhaps these witnesses didn’t get mixed up with post – event discussion as they went against the majority who made recalled incorrect information.
L – Therefore, the memory conformity explanation has evidence against it, which could mean witnesses don’t necessarily mix misinformation up from other witnesses’ memories.
