Eye Witness Testimony Flashcards
What does Fruzzetti suggest about ewt?
thousands of people wrongly convicted every year based on ewt
The first memory stage
The witness encodes into LTM details of the event and people involved - may only be partial and distorted- as most crimes happen very quickly at night and accompanied by rapid and complex often violent action
The second stage of memory
The witness retains the info for a period of time- memories may be lost or modied during this time of retention
- most forgetting takes place within the first few mins- other activities between encoding and retrieval may interfere w the memory
The third stage of memory
The witness retrieves the memory from storage- what happens during the reconstruction of the memory may significantly affect its accuracy
How did Loftus and Palmer test it?
•Showed 45 students films and traffic accidents
•The questions after the video included a crucial one about the speed of the car containing words like ‘hit’ ‘smashed’ ‘collided’ ‘bumped’ ‘contacted’
What were the findings of loftus and palmers test - traffic
The group with ‘smashed’ estimated highest speed as about 41mph
The group given the word ‘contacted’ estimated lowest speed of 30mph
- shows leading questions can have a significant effect on memory
Criticisms of Loftus and Palmer traffic study
- not true to life - more accurate in real life ( Yuilie and Custshall)
Interviewed 13 people who had witnessed an armed robbery 4 months after the crime
Despite two misleading questions witnesses provided accurate recall that matched initial statement - suggest post event info may not affect memory in real life
•Demand characteristics - very hard to estimate speed so ps may have used an available clue
Loftus, miller and burns 1978- words used in asking questions can change the answer test
Subjects watched a sequence depicting a red car that makes a turn and hits a pedestrian
-50% saw a stop sign at intersection
-50% saw yield sign
20 mins later subjects received a recognition test in which they were shown two photos one had a stop sign and one with a yield sign
•75% who were given the consistent question picked the correct sign
•Whereas only 41% of those who were given misleading question picked the correct side
Lindsay (1990)
findings- when ps are told to ignore misleading info in account of crime- they were still affected by misleading info
Conclusion- misleading questions changed the way info is stored and it isn’t just retrieval
evaluation of loftus experiment
•lab experiment
•used realistic material, but situation was still artificial
•In real life witnesses are not prepared so may not be paying the same amount of attention
•Ps may have been subjected to demand characteristics
•Could not get fully informed consent - as couldn’t reveal he was going to ask misleading questions
Factors affecting accuracy of EWT
Anxiety- the weapon focus effect- Loftus 1979
