Improving EWT

Improving EWT

1. Anxiety

   • State of emotional arousal where there is a feeling or experience of apprehension brought about by a real or anticipated threat.
     • AO3: Weapon focus may not be relevant= Johnsons&Scott could test surprise not anxiety-picked repeated with chicken, handgun EWT worse in higher anxiety but more in more unusual activities
     • AO3: Field studies lack control= usually time between witness and recall in real life, so extraneous variables could affect recall not anxiety.
       • Inverted-U is too simplistic
     • Ethical issues: creating high anxiety could be unethical for Ps
   • Negative affects: creates arousal in the body which prevents us from paying attention to important things, so recall is worse= weapon focus effect
     • weapons present causes anxiety, example of tunnel theory of memory arguing we tend to focus on central details, forgetting less important details
     • Evidence= Johnson&Scott: Ps in waiting room, hear argument and see man leave with pen=49% recall of face. When left with bloody pen knife 33% identified
   • Positive affects of EWT: sometimes stress can make people more alert, can trigger fight or flight which increases alertness and improves memory
     • Evidence: Yuille&Cuthsall= real life shooting, 13 witnesses interviewed 5 months later, if reported high anxiety had 88% recall and lower had 75%
     • Contradictory findings: Yerkes&Dodson said relationship between recall and anxiety is inverted-U theory

2. Improving EWT: cognitive interview

   • Issues of interviewing: recall and context of coding are different, lack of retrieval cues- Fisher ' need to give witness retrieval cues'
   • CI: Geiselman&Fisher based on encoding specificity principle
     • Report everything: include every detail, trivial details may be important and talking through event can trigger important memories
     • Reinstate the context: should return to orgiginal crime scene imagine what environment was like- context-dependant forgetting
     • Change the order: should recall event in different chronological order, to stop them reporting how they would expect the event to happen and prevents dishonesty.
       • Change perspective: recall from someone elses perspective and how it would appear to other witnesses, disrupts effect of expectations and shcema on recall.
   • Enhanced CI: reduce EW anxiety, minimize distractions, get witness to speak slowly, remind them its ok to not know, use open ended Qs
     • Milne&Bull: found report everything and reinstate context most effective, after recall of video of crime
     • Kohnken: meta-analysis, enhanced CI consistently provided more correct info than standard police interview, supports real life benefits of enhanced CI
     • Ci can increase inaccurate info recalled, 82% accurate recall but 61% increase inaccurate recall

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