Introduction to eye witness testimony

• Memory is reconstructive
• we do not faithfully recall all details of an incident- we remember key features and recreate the event using our SCHEMA
• SCHEMA- organised package of knowledge- may include prejudices

Tuckey and Brewer- people shown a video of a bank robbery. Better recall of features that fitted in with their schema than those that didn't

• Misleading information (leading questions/past events info)

Loftus 1 

• 45 students (5 groups of 9)
• shown video clips of 7 different car crashes
• after clip, pps asked a series of Qs, including one critical one- How fast were the cars going when they (verb) into each other?
• 'smashed'- estimated mean of 40 mph 
• 'hit'- estimated mean of 34 mph
• significantly different estimates, choice in words effect recall

Loftus 2

• 150 students in 3 groups
• shown video of car crash, followed by some Qs

• • Group 1: How fast... 'smashed' ...
  • Group 2: ""... hit...
  • Group 3 (control): not asked to estimate speed
• Aweek later, they were brought back and asked if they saw any broken glass (there was none)
  • Group 1- 32% said yes
  • Group 2- 14% said yes
  • Group 3- 12% said yes
• Results for group 2  and 3 were not significantly different but big difference to goup 1- importance of verb

Loftus 3

• video of car crash
• Did you see a broken headlight?    (7% said yes)
• Did you see the broken headlight? (17% said yes)
• 'the' makes it more definite that their should have been a broken headlight, misleading, more likely to agree
• change in verb makes a significant difference to the results, therefore word choice influences results

• lab experiment centred on an artificial task
• Lacks relevance to real lide scenarios
• Real car creahes wouldave much more emotional impact- store as episodic- which would effect recall
• Results may be due to demand characteristics- the pps were her students so may have given the aswers they think she would have wanted
• They were expecting a car crash and questions after- different to real life- lack validity
• in real life, everything around the crash can act as a cue which will effect recall
• only mainly used young people- biased

Yuille and Cutshall

Procedure:

• interviewed 13 people who had witnessed an armed robbery in Canada
• interviews took place more than 4 months after crime
• inc 2 misleading Qs

Findings:

• witnesses provided accurate recall that matched their initial detail reports
• suggest post event info may not affect memory in real life EWT
• Against Loftus

• People with generally low recall will struggle to remember 
• if they score hyigh on measures of imagery vividness it will affect recall 
• if they score high on measures of empathy it will affect recall

Lofus

• her exeriemnt went wrong when she tried to convince people a purse was red when it was brown
• this shows that the misleading difference has to be very small for the experiement to work

•  1) misleading info can change the original memo
•  2) misleading info has created a second interferring memo

Loftus (1978)

• PPs shown a slide of events leading up to a car crash
• one group were shown a red car stopping at a stop sign
• another group shown a red car approaching a yield sign
• all PPs given a set of Qs- Q1- did another care pass the red car at the yield sign Q2- did another car pass the red car at the stop sign
• they were shown a set of slides and they had to pick which slides were in the original sequence yield and stop sign shown
• 75% of pps with the right Q picked the correct slides
• only 41%asked the inconsistent Q picked the correct slide whyich shows that misleading Qs effect recall 

Bekerian and Bowers

• replicated Loftus experiment, but loftus present the slides in a random orders
• they showed the slides in chronological order of sequence, this affected recall and consistent and inconsistent groups recalled the same
• this shows that memories were intact and that misleading info affects retrieval and not the storage of the memo

The Yerkes- Dodson law

Deffenbacher

• meta- analysis of 21 studies
• found the yerles-dodson law could explain what was going on
• updated meth analysis to cover 63 studies- found catatrophe theory is a better explanation

Aim: to text the effect of presence of a weapon on memory

Procedure: two conditions

• One involving a weapon and one not
• condition 1: a man emerged holding a pen and with grease on his hands
• condition 2: the discussion was more heated and a man emerged holding a paper knife covered in blood

Findings: when asked to identify the man from 50 photos PPs in  condition 1 were 49% accurate and in conditions 2 33% accurate

Conclusion: Suggests that the weapon may have distracted attention from the person holding it. Might explain why eye witness sometimes have poor recall for certain details of violent crimes]

Evaluation: Loftus monitored eyewitness eye movements and found that the presence of the weapon causes attention to be physically drawn towards the weapan and away from other things such as the persons face. it was a field experiment- pps not aware it was a test, more mundane reaction than in a lab experiment

Riniolo et al

• examined the accuracy of eyewitness testimony from survivors of the sinking of Titanic
• was accepted it sank intact- despite contrary evidence from EW
• 75% of survivors reported that Titanic was breaking apart as it sank- was correcr
• the accuracy of the titanic survivors goes against Loftus as the anxiety led to better memory- accurate even tho memo formed in traumatic conditions

Yuille and Cutshall

• Investigated the anxiety levels and accuracy of recall of 13 witnesses to a fatal shooting
• high anxiety had less accurate recall than those wih lower levels
• very high anxiety had extremely accurate recall
• against inverted U hypothesis as those with very high anxiety should have shown less accurate recall

• Developed bt Fisher and Geiselman
• looked at polic interrogation- W bombarded with closed Qs out of sequence- these tactics conflicted with what was known about the importance of cues

The main components of the CI

• 1) Report everything (RE)                                  These two recreate cues
• 2) Context reinstatement (CR)
• 3) Recall in reverse order (RO)                           these give several routes into memo
• 4) Recall from a changed perspective (CP)

Report everything-  recall all info, eve which seemingly has little relevance or which is remembered less confidently

CR- recall both the environmental and emotional context of tghe event- e.g. weather and personal feelings

RO- recall the eent in different chronological orders

CP- recall event from different perspective

Geiselman et al 1985 

• tested pps by showing them videos of stimulated crime and then testing diff grous with a CI, police interview and under influence of hypnosis
• found CI elicited more info than other methods

Fisher et al- in real life

• demonstrated effectiveness of the CI in real police settings
• trained detectives to use the enhances CI technique with a genuine crime W
• found that its use significantly inc the amount of info recalled

Kohnken 

found W quesioned using the CI also recalled more incorrect info than using standards Qs because CI procedure gets more info overall than other procedures

Kebbel

• found there was widespread use of CI- concern abojut incorrect recall and time it took to complete- mainly used RE AND CR but rarely CP and RO

Milne and Bull

• tested all the CI procedures singly/in combo
• ffound all 4 procedures used singly produces more recall than standard interview techniques
• however, most effective combo appeared to be the use of CR and RE instructions, which is in line with what practicing police officers had suspected

• Amended version of CI suggested by Fisher and Gieselman
• Seeks to build a trusting relationship between interviewer and witness and improve the quality of communication between the two

Important extra features:

• no unnecessary interuprtions/distractions
• witness controls flow of info
• open ended Qds
• getting W to speak slowly
• pps reminded not to guess and use 'i dont know' option to reduce confabulations (false memos)
• Reducing axiety in W

Process:

• Get witness to control flow of info by asking open ended Qs on neutral topics
• next stage involves CR
• followed by witness free recall of events
• during this, the interviewer stresses the imp of 'RE' and not guessing
• interviewer moves on to asking about the info recalled using focussed memo techniques- involve witness concentrating on mental images of memo- details are most retrievable when perceptually related to the witness's mental image and so interviewers should time Qs accordingly 

Holiday

• produced modified cognitive interview suitable for use with children 
• stressed building a trusting relationship
• gies control to witness
• removes CP component as children are too young to effectively emphasise with others

Coker

• ECI technique that stressed the use of focussed mental imagery produced inc accurate detail especially concerning personal details recalled
• efect was greaed if the ECI took place one week after an event
• suggests ECI is an improvement on CI  ut the timing of when an interview is conducted is vital to its success

Verkampt and Ginet

• Interiewed children after painting session either with CI, SPI or MCI
• CI and MCIs were all superior to the SP in producing accurate detail