EWT and memory improvement

EWT and memory improvement

1. Eye witness testimony is the evidence given by a witness to a significant event such as a crime or serious accident. This is based on the memory of the event

   • Factors affecting the accuracy of EWT
     • Age of witness
     • Anxiety
       • Loftus Weapons focus effect (1979)
         • Two groups were asked to meet outside a laboratory for an experiment
           • One group overheard a hushed discussion about equipment failure and then a man came out of the room holding a pen with greasy hands
           • One group heard a yelled argument about equipment failure, then chairs being thrown and things smashing before it went quiet and a man left the room holding a bloody knife
           • Participants were then asked to recall the man from their situation from 50 photos
             • 49% recalled the greasy handed man and 33% recalled the bloody knife guy. This shows that anxiety caused by weapons can lead to inaccurate recollection of an event
               • HOWEVER THERE IS EVIDENCE AGAINST THIS IN A REAL LIFE SITUATION MEANING THIS IS NOT ALWAYS CORRECT
       • Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
         • Interviewed 13 witnesses to a real life shooting involving a store owner and an armed thief. The store owner was wounded, the thief was shot dead.
           • Witnesses gave accurate accounts several months later
           • Those closest to the event knew the most detail
           • Those who were most distressed at the time were the most accurate later
     • Misleading information
       • Loftus and Palmer EXP 1
         • 45 students were shown 7 videos of car crashes and then asked questions on each one. However, one question was misleading. A range of different verbs were used when they asked the question 'how quickly do you think the cars were going when they hit?'
           • The findings showed that depending on the verb used there was a common difference in the average speed students said. There was a 10mph difference between 'smashed' (41mph) and 'contacted' (31mph). This show questions can provoke certain answers.
       • Loftus and Palmer EXP 2
         • After EXP1 a week later ppts returned and were asked more questions about the films without being shown them again. They were either asked if they saw THE broken glass or saw ANY broken glass.
           • There was no broken glass in the incident but the ppts who had been asked before with the verb 'smashed' were more likely to answer yes to seeing smashed glass.
       • Loftus and Zanni (1975)
         • Did the same thing but with a broken headlight. 17% said there was when they had a misleading question and 7% said there were without. This supports misleading questions prompting certain answers.

2. Cognitive Interviews (by Fisher and Geiselman)

   • Recreate context: mentally recreate the original incident and recall image
   • Report everything: report even the little details about the incident
   • Change order: change order of the incident recalled- alternate ways through timeline
   • Change perspective: ask to attempt to describe the event from another witnesses pov
   • Geiselman (1998)
     • Wanted to compare the effectiveness of standard interviews vs cognitive interviews
       • Showed ppts a film of a violent crime and after 48hrs interviewed them with either interview. Each interview was recorded.
         • Results recorded as:
           • Number of correct items recalled
           • Number of errors- incorrect items
           • Number of errors- confabulated (made up) items
           • Cognitive
             • 41.5
               • 7.3
                 • 0.7
                   • Confabulated
                 • Wrong
               • Right
           • Standard
             • 29.4
               • 6.1
                 • 0.4
           • The cognitive interview leads to better memory for events, with witnesses able to recall more relevant info compared to a standard interview
   • Weaknesses:
     • More time consuming becuase special training is needed
     • Shouldn't be used on children under 8
     • Not all instructions are equally affective and can influence EW
     • Milne and Bull (2002) found the report everything and context reinstallment components to be the most effective

3. Memory improvement

   • Visual mnemonics
     • Method of Loci
       • Number of places is the same number as the things you need to remember
         • convert each item into an image and mentally place one item in each location
           • When you need to remember the item, mentally visualise walking through the locations
             • eg. house - kitchen = apple
     • Peg-word method
       • Using 'peg-words' to create interactive linking images in a standard list using visualisation
         • e.g one=bun=milk=image of both linked
   • Verbal mnemonics
     • Acronyms
       • A word which is made up of the first letter of lots of words
         • e.g laser
     • Acrostics
       • Taking the first letter of a thing you need to remember and turning it into a sentence or poem
         • Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain
   • Cue-dependent memory
     • Context-dependent memory
       • Something acting as a trigger for retrieval e.g chewing gum while revising and in and exam chewing the same flavour gum can help trigger memories from revising