Memory: Eyewitness Testimony (2)
- Created by: neleanor
- Created on: 04-05-15 14:38
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- Memory: Eyewitness Testimony (2)
- Anxiety
- Loftus & Burns (1979)
- Effects of anxiety
- Sat outside a lad 'over-hearing' a discussion within
- Condition 1: friendly, about equipment failure, man with greasy hands came out holding a pen
- Condition 2: hostile, breaking glass and overturning furniture, man came out with knife covered in blood
- Given 50 photos and asked to identify the man
- Condition 1 more accurate (49%) than condition 2 (33%)
- Weapon had created anxiety so focus on the knife rather than the person
- High stress led to less accurate recall
- Weapon had created anxiety so focus on the knife rather than the person
- EVALUATION
- Lab experiment
- No extraneous variables BUT demand characteristics
- lacks ecological validity -> artificial setting -> can't generalise
- Lab experiment
- Christianson & Hubinette (1993)
- Effects of anxiety
- Survey of 110 witnesses of bank robberies, some bystanders some personally threatened
- Victims had higher stress levels and more accurate recall than bystanders
- In real events high stress leads to more anxiety
- EVALUATION
- Natural experiment -> high ecological validity -> can generalise
- Yerkes-Dodson Curve
- Certain level of stress when recall is most accurate, higher or lower than that and it gets worse
- Yuille & Cutshall (1986)
- Effects of anxiety and misleading questions on anxiety
- 13 witness to robbery re-interviewed five months after event
- Recall accurate and misleading questions had no effect
- EVALUATION
- Natural experiment -> high ecological validity -> can generalise
- Low population validity -> small sample size -> can't generalise
- Loftus & Burns (1979)
- Cognitive Interviews
- Designed to improve accuracy of recall in police interviews
- 1) Context reinstatement 2) Report everything 3) Change perspective 4) Reverse order
- 1) Mentally go back to the scene, everything about it: weather, thinking feeling, preceeding events
- 2) Report every detail able to be recalled
- 3) Recall from different viewpoints, not just own
- 4) Several different orders, forwards and backwards
- Interviewer must not interupt the recall otherwise they will interrupt a though process
- Gieselman (1985)
- Compared statements made in cognitive interviews and standard police interviews
- Number of correct statements greater in cognitive interviews
- Cognitive interviews produces a more accurate recall
- EVALUATION
- Lab experiment
- Lacks ecological validity -> artificial setting -> can't generalise
- Variables controlled -> result more valid
- Lab experiment
- Fisher (1987)
- Detectives used cognitive interview with real-life witnesses
- More correct statements than with the standard police interview, first 2 stages more successful
- Produces better recall whilst being more accurate
- EVALUATION
- Natural experiment
- High ecological validity -> real-life situation -> can generalise
- Less control of variables -> may be less valid
- Natural experiment
- Anxiety
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