Eye Witness Testimony

Parker and Carranza (1989)

They compared ability of primary school children and college student to correctly identify a target individual following a slide sequence of a mock crime. In a photo id task child witnesses had higher rate of choosing somebody than adult, although they were more likely to make more errors of identification than the college student.

However-

Yarmey (1993)

He stopped 651 adults in public places and asked them to recall the physical characteristics of a young woman who they spoke to for 15 secs 2 mins ago. Young and middle aged adults were more confident in their recall than older adult- but there were no significant differences in the accuracy of recall between the age groups of witnesses. 

Deffenbacher et al (2004)

• Meta analysis of 18 studies
• Effects of heightened anxiety on accuracy of eyewitness recall.
• Support for - high levels of stress negatively impacted on the accuracy of eyewitness memory.
• Some studies found that emotional arousal may enhance the accuracy of memory.
• CHRISTIANSON & HUBINETTER (1983) Found this when they questioned 58 real witnesses to bank roberies. those who had been threatened were more accurate in there recall and remembered more details compared to on lookers who were less emotionally aroused.