Key question; is EWT too unreliable to trust

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Key question; is EWT too unreliable to trust

Advantages

  • (Def. EWT; information given by a witness after seeing an event/crime. Recorded police statement/given as testimony in court
  • EWT used to corroborate forensic evidence; especially if jurors find forensic evidence difficult to understand- thus rely on EWT
  • Therefor, highly influential for court case- can decide whether someone is guilty/punished- needs to be accurate to ensure actual criminal caught/punished
  • Yuille and Cutshall; using naturalist case study; RL EW demonstrated great accuracy in recall, and not influenced by LQs, even after prolonged period of time between initial event and recall
  • Thompson- statements by survivors of sunken riverboat; despite extreme emotional trauma-recall; very accurate after many months
  • suggests- lab research may not reflect conditions experienced by RL witnesses-ppts; artificial setting (video clip/stimulated event)- emotional involvement isn't replicated &demand characteristics
  • real life EW-questionned by police & believe testimony has real importance- can affected outcome of police investigation- not replicated for ppts
  • Steyvers and Hammer; recall in naturalistic scenes, prior knowledge via semantic memory-contributes to accurate episodic memory; thus experimental research's claim-EWT is flawed- invalid- doesn't reflect RL
  • Flashbulb memories; memory of event particularly clear due to emotional impact of event for individual
  • Hirst et al.-memory recall for emotional event remains accurate for prolonged period of time, though subject to fading eventually

Disadvantages

  • The Devlin Report; courts should be very cautious in sole reliance of EWT in absence of other corroborating evidence
  • Reconstructive memory- schema theory; questions reliability- EWT reconstruct memory of criminal event to fit with understanding/expectations within situation, e.g. perpetrators appearance; triggers EW's schema about type of appearance- thus encode and real perpetrator differently to reality
  • Post-event info; inaccurate memory; Loftus & leading questions; difficult to isolate true memory without additional influences (reconstructive hypothesis)
  • Other factors affect reliability of EWT- individual characteristics of witness, e.g. age, context e.g. presence of weapon (weapon focus effect), or post-event factors e.g.how witness is questioned/duration
  • Yarmey; field experiment-identifiction of person in street; correct identification-50%-more ecologically valid

Evaluation

Some argue flashbulb memos are not a true phenomenon/increase accuracy of recall- Neisser and Harsch Some evidence to support accuracy of EWT via naturalistic research- though substantial experimental research research- need to be cautious in relying on EWT- more research needs to be conducted to establish important factors in influence of reliability of EWT- how these factors help to improve/diminish recall 

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