EWT

EWT

1. Reliable

   • Generalise eyewitness research
     • Difficult to generalise as slides/videos usually used
     • Emotion and involvement are removed
     • Studies lack realism
   • Lab experiments
     • Aware they have to pay attention
     • Happens quickly in real life
     • Studies lack ecological validity
     • Tend to study undergraduate students
       • Age gender and personality are factors
       • Homogenous group may not reflect population
   • Leading questions
     • Only tend to alter small details
     • Central features not easily affected
   • Smith and Elsworth
     • If a witness believes the interviewer has no knowledge of the incident or is untrustworthy, witness will not succumb to leading questions
     • Would be true of an interviewing police officer
     • Would not be true of a psychologist
   • Research
     • Recall is not affected to the extremes that lab research suggests

2. Unreliable

   • Barlett
     • Memory is an imaginative reconstruction based on assumptions and beliefs about a given person, object or situation
     • Evidence may not be entirely accurate
   • Loftus
     • Investigated the influence of post event information
       • Information introduced after an incident that becomes incorperated into the original memory as though it always happened
     • Lab experiments with leading questions to investigate the influence of such information on the accuracy of recall
     • Loftus et. al
       • Estimated duration of an event is distorted
       • Showing participants video footage of a stimulated bank robbery, they found the estimated duration 5x greater
       • Affects EWT reliability
   • Violence
     • Negative effect on recall
     • Clifford and Hollin
       • Video footage of a man stealing a womans handbag and roughly pushing her against a wall or asking her directions
       • Recall was poorer for more violent footage
       • Violence caused interference in memory, thereby not allowing rehearsal to take place
   • Weapon focus
     • Narrowing of attention, resulting in other details not being recalled
     • Pickel
       • If presence of weapon affected recall
       • 2 minute video of a man walking up to a hairdressers' receptionist with either
         • Nothing in his hand
         • A pair of scissors
         • A gun
         • A wallet
         • A raw chicken
       • Each condition tested high/low unusualness and high/'low threat
       • Participants asked what the man was doing and to identify him from a lineup
       • Unusual objects - most deleterious effect on recall but not identification