THE CRIMINAL APPROACH - EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

Question 1

What is an eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

Criminal behaviour that is observed or experiences by an individual and used as evidence by the police or in the court of law

Question 2

What different factors effect eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 2

Yerkes-Dodson law, Weapons focus, post event information, flashbulb memories, clothing, race

Question 3

What is the Yerkes-Dodson law?

Answer 3

Heightened arousal/stress can impact the accuracy of EWT
Valentine and Mesout, Stanny and Johnson, Yuille and Cutshall, Thompson

Question 4

How do Valentine and Mesout support the Yerkes-Dodson law?

Answer 4

found that heightened anxiety resulted in worse recall accuracy of the ‘scary’ person, after observing participants walking through the London dungeon where a confidant jumped out on them

Question 5

How do Stanny and Johnson support the Yerkes-Dodson law?

Answer 5

found that police officer training involved a shooting incident, which resulted in fewer details being recalled

Question 6

Who doesn’t support the Yerkes-Dodson law?

Answer 6

Thompson studied statements of survivors of a sunken river boat, and found that despite experiencing an emotional traumatic event their recall was very accurate
Yuille and Cutshall found that participants who witnessed a shooting outside of a gun shop had very accuracy recall despite witnessing something traumatic and stressful

Question 7

What is weapons focus?

Answer 7

Accuracy of EWT can be effected by the use of weapons due to stress and attention
We tend to focus on the thing with immediate threat due to evolution

Question 8

Who supports weapons focus?

Answer 8

Loftus et al suggests that the weapon effect occurs because the presence of a weapon focuses attention away from less dramatic images (ie the perpetrator)
Pickel found that the weapons focus seemed to be a feature of the unusualness of the weapon, not the levels of stress due to perceived threat
Laboratory experiment using a video where a man enters a hair salon holding scissors, a handgun, raw chicken nothing
The handgun and raw chicken lead to the worst recall of the man due to them being unusual to see in that context

Question 9

Who doesn’t support weapons focus?

Answer 9

Laboratory research into EWT may present low levels of threat from a weapon due to their artificial nature and the participant not actually feeling threatened
Waitstaff looked at victims of rape and assault, and whether a weapon was involved or not, didn’t effect the EWT of the victim

Question 10

What is post-event information?

Answer 10

Schemas and reconstructive memory can affect how information is encoded and retrieved as we interpret an event based on cultural norms, expectations and previous experiences
‘Misinformation effect’ is when exposure to misleading post-event information has been found to decrease recall accuracy

Question 11

Who supports post-event information having an effect on eyewitness testimony?

Answer 11

Loftus and Pickrell found that 29% of participants ‘remembered’ false childhood stories as they were generic and fitted in with their schemas of what could’ve happened
Loftus and Palmer found that leading questions effected/decreased the accuracy of EWT when recalling the speed of the car, and if they could see any broken glass, depending on the critical verb used in the question

Question 12

Who doesn’t post-event information having an effect on eyewitness testimony?

Answer 12

Yuille and Cutshall found that leading questions don’t alter memory
Witnesses of a shooting outside a gun shop had accurate recall of the event, despite being asked misleading questions in the interviews using the Loftus and Zanni technique

Question 13

What are flashbulb memories?

Answer 13

Hypothesised that this is a special form of memory we have evolved that enables us to remember particularly distinctive events in detail (eg Twin Towers)

Question 14

Who supports flashbulb memories?

Answer 14

Brown and Kulik found that 75% of black participants reported flashbulb memories of Martin Luther King’s assassination, compared to 33% of white participants

Question 15

Who doesn’t support flashbulb memories?

Answer 15

Neisser and Harsh argued that flashbulb memories aren’t distinctive memories but are just recalled more often and have more media coverage
Students had an inaccurate recall of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster 3 years after they’d learnt about it, despite it being prominent in their lives

Question 16

How can clothing effect eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 16

Saunders argues that witnesses pay more attention to a suspect’s clothing than to more stable characteristics, such as height and facial features)
Participants saw a video of a criminal wearing a t-shirt and glasses, and were more likely to select someone wearing the same thing in a line-up

Question 17

How can race effect eyewitness testimonies?

Answer 17

Errors are more likely to occur when the suspect’s race differed from the witness
Luce found that African-American, white American, and Chinese American participants recognised members of their own ethnic group well, but not faces of people from other races