Eye Witness Testimony

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Why is it important for psychologists to research EWT?
Juries use it and people can be convicted for something they haven't done because of what someone said they thought they saw therefore it is unreliable.
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Deffenbacher's initial hypothesis on the relationship between anxiety and EWT
Stress-performance relationship follows the inverted U function proposed by Yerkes-Dodson law that is for tasks of moderate complexity, performance improves with increased arousal up to an optimal point where it starts to decline
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Peters Procedures
Tested people who were attending their local health clinic for an inoculation. They met their nurse and a researcher for equal amounts of time. A week later they had to identify which was which from photos.
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Peters findings
The pts identified the researcher easier than the nurse suggesting heightened anxiety levels due to the injection led to a decrease in memory accuracy
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Yuille & Cutshall
Described a shooting where one person was killed and one was injured. Witness remained accurate in reports despite anxiety. Weakness is that those who experienced high levels of stress were closer to the event that might have helped accuracy.
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Yuille & Cutshall V Peters
Y&C goes against Peters study because pts remembered everything well/
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Flaws in Yuille & Cutshall's study
Over simplistic explanation. Deffenbacher has since reviewed his earlier findings and claims they're over simplistics and suggests EWT performance increases gradually then drops at a certain point
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What does Deffenbacher's over simplistic claim suggest about the relationship between anxiety and EWT?
EWT performance increases gradually up to high anxiety levels and then at a certain point there is a catastrophic drop in performance.
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Support for Deffenbacher new hypothesis
A meta analysis of 63 studies showed considerable support for the hypothesis that high levels of stress negatively impact on accuracy of EW identification an recall of crime related details.
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Age of witness-Dent
Children usually provide fewer details without prompts and perform worse than adults when given specific questions.
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Roberts and Lamb
161 interviews with children who has made allegations of abuse. 68 interviewers had sometimes misinterpreted or distorted reports. Nearly 2/3 uncorrected by the child
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Ochsner
Children watch staged theft. More accurate recall compared to same staged event but without theft. Older people seem to perform worse on EWT. More likely to make false identifications, poor at recalling specific details.
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King and Yuille
If the child is interested, they can match adult accuracy. Children are more willing to accept inaccurate information provided by adults because of fear of contradicting an adult
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Sims
A child's response 'in private' was misconstrued as 'in the privates'
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Cohen and Faulkner
Showed pts film of kidnapping then presented with misleading details. Older pts more likely to be mislead than younger pts.
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Coxon and Valentine
Older witnesses may not be so unreliable in all erspects. Pts asked questions after film. Some misleading others not misleading. Adults less suggesible
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

Stress-performance relationship follows the inverted U function proposed by Yerkes-Dodson law that is for tasks of moderate complexity, performance improves with increased arousal up to an optimal point where it starts to decline

Back

Deffenbacher's initial hypothesis on the relationship between anxiety and EWT

Card 3

Front

Tested people who were attending their local health clinic for an inoculation. They met their nurse and a researcher for equal amounts of time. A week later they had to identify which was which from photos.

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

The pts identified the researcher easier than the nurse suggesting heightened anxiety levels due to the injection led to a decrease in memory accuracy

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

Described a shooting where one person was killed and one was injured. Witness remained accurate in reports despite anxiety. Weakness is that those who experienced high levels of stress were closer to the event that might have helped accuracy.

Back

Preview of the back of card 5
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