Eyewitness Testimony and Cognitive Interview PDF

Eyewitness Testimony Misleading Information Loftus and Palmer (AO1) Procedure Forty-five American students formed an opportunity sample. This was a laboratory experiment with five conditions, only one of which was experienced by each participant (an independent measures design). Participan...

Eyewitness Testimony Misleading Information Loftus and Palmer (AO1) Procedure Forty-five American students formed an opportunity sample. This was a laboratory experiment with five conditions, only one of which was experienced by each participant (an independent measures design). Participants were shown slides of a car accident involving a number of cars and asked to describe what had happened as if they were eyewitnesses. They were then asked specific questions, including the question “About how fast were the cars going when they (hit / smashed / collided / bumped /contacted) each other?” 22 Loftus and Palmer (AO1) Findings The estimated speed was affected by the verb used. The verb implied information about the speed, which systematically affected the participants’ memory of the accident. Participants who were asked the “smashed” question thought the cars were going faster than those who were asked the “hit” question. The participants in the “smashed” condition reported the highest speeds, followed by “collided”, “bumped”, “hit”, and “contacted” in descending order. 23 (AO3) The research lacks mundane realism, as the video clip does not have the same emotional impact as witnessing a real-life accident and so the research lacks ecological validity. A further problem with the study was the use of students as participants. Students are not representative of the general population in a number of ways. Importantly they may be less experienced drivers and therefore less confident in their ability to estimate speeds. This may have influenced them to be more swayed by the verb in the question. A strength of the study is it's easy to replicate (i.e. copy). This is because the method was a laboratory experiment which followed a standardised procedure. Anxiety / Stress (AO1) When we are in a state of anxiety, we tend to focus on whatever is making us feel anxious or fearful, and we exclude other information about the situation. If a weapon is used to threaten a victim, their attention is likely to focus on it. Consequently, their recall of other information is likely to be poor. However, a study by Yuille and Cutshall (1986) contradicts the importance of stress in influencing eyewitness memory. 21 witnesses observed a shooting incident in Canada outside a gun shop in which 1 person was killed and a 2nd seriously wounded. 24 The incident took place on a major thoroughfare in mid- afternoon. All the witnesses were interviewed by the investigating police, and 13 witnesses (aged 15-32 years) agreed to a research interview 4-5 months after the event. The witnesses were also asked to rate how stressed they had felt at the time of the incident, using a 7-point scale. The eyewitness accounts provided in both the police and research interviews were analysed and compared. The results of the study showed the witnesses were highly accurate in their accounts, and there was little change in amount or accuracy of recall after 5 months. The study also showed that stress levels did not have an effect on memory, contrary to lab findings. All participants showed high levels of accuracy, indicating that stress had little effect on accuracy. However, very high anxiety was linked to better accuracy. Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (about 88% accurate compared to 75% for the less-stressed group). (AO3) One strength of this study is that it had high ecological validity compared with lab studies which tend to control variables and use student populations as research participants. One weakness of this study was that there was an extraneous variable. The witnesses who experienced the highest levels of stress where actually closer to the event (the shooting) and this may have helped with the accuracy of their memory recall. 25  The Cognitive Interview (AO1) The cognitive interview involves several techniques: Context Reinstatement Trying to mentally recreate an image of the situation, including details of the environment, such as the weather conditions, and the individual’s emotional state including their feelings at the time of the incident. Recall from a Changed Perspective Trying to mentally recreate the situation from different points of view e.g. describing what another witness present at the scene would have seen. Recall in Reverse Order The witness is asked to describe the scene in a different chronological order e.g. from the end to the beginning. 26  Report Everything The interviewer encourages the witness to report all details about the event, even though these details may seem unimportant. The Enhanced Cognitive Interview The main additional features are: Encourage the witness to relax and speak slowly. Offer comments to help clarify witness statements. Adapt questions to suit the understanding of individual witnesses. (AO3) One limitation is the cognitive interview is that it's time consuming to conduct and takes much longer than a standard police interview. It is also time consuming to train police officers to use this method. This means that it is unlikely that the 'proper' version of the cognitive interview is used. Another limitation is that some elements of the cognitive interview may be more valuable than others. For example, research has shown that using a combination of 'report everything' and 'context reinstatement' produced better recall than any of the conditions individually. 27 A final criticism is that police personnel must be trained and this can be expensive and time consuming. Geiselman (1985) set out to investigate the effectiveness of the cognitive interview. Participants viewed a film of a violent crime and, after 48 hours, were interviewed by a policeman using one of three methods: the cognitive interview; a standard interview used by the Los Angeles Police; or an interview using hypnosis. The number of facts accurately recalled, and the number of errors made were recorded. The average number of correctly recalled facts for the cognitive interview was 41.2, for hypnosis it was 38.0 and for the standard interview it was 29.4. A-Level Revision Notes AQA(A) Social Influence Attachment Psychopathology Approaches Biopsychology Issues and Debates 28