Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

1. Aims

   • to record and evaluate witness accounts
   • To examine issues raised by laboratory research
   • to look at witness accounts- their accuracy and the kind of errors made
   • misleading questions were incorporated into the research interview to see how an eyewitness might be affected by distortion
   • The idea of the study was to look at eyewitness interviews immediately after the event, which were conducted by a police officer, and to compare these with interviews carried out by research staff

2. Procedure

   • Twenty-one witnesses to the gun shooting were interviewed by police after incident
     • twenty out of 21 contacted by research team. 13 agreed
   • Police had interviews the witnesses and recorded the interviews by hand. Asked to describe event in their own terms and then officer asked a series of questions to amplify what had been said. Reports were word to word.
   • About 4 or 5 months later, 13 of the witnesses were interviewed by researchers and interviews were recorded on audiotapes and transcribed
     • the same procedure was followed- their own account followed by questions
     • half of participants were then asked if they had seen a busted headlight and the other half were asked if they had seen the busted headlight
     • Half were then asked about the yellow quarter panel and the other half about a yellow quarter panel
   • The interviewer also asked about their emotional state before the incident and any problems afterwards using a scale 1 to 7
   • divided incident up into action details and description details and description details further divided into object and people descriptions

3. Results

   • Action details- Police- 392 (60.35%)- Research- 551 (52.20%)
   • Person details- Police- 180 (29.72%)- Research- 267 (25.27%)
   • Object details- Police- 77.5 (11.95%)- Research- 283 (27.53%)
   • Total- Police- 649.5- Research- 1056.5
   • can be seen that researchers obtained more detail as they asked more questions of no interest to police
   • Police achieved more action details than object or person details
   • Of 13 participants, 7 were central witnesses and 6 peripheral witnesses. However, both groups were equally accurate. Police+ 84.56%- central, 79.31%- peripheral
   • misleading information had little effect

4. Conclusions

   • a unique event so it is not easy to generalise from findings
   • findings shows that eyewitnesses are not incorrect in accounts
   • Flash-bulb memory
   • although some details may be wrong that does not make other details wrong