Yuille and Cutshall (1986) Evaluation

Yuille and Cutshall (1986) Evaluation

1. Strengths

   • This is a field study that looks at a real incident with real witnesses.
     • It has validity that laboratory experiments do not have and it was carried out because of that validity
   • Great care was taken when counting details from the real incident to make sure that witness testimonies did not alter what 'really' happened.
     • such care enables the findings to be seen to be reliable

2. Weaknesses

   • There are problems generalising from specific and unique incident.
     • The researchers themselves suggest that this could be a case of flashbulb memory, which is not often seen in laboratory experiments so generalising the findings to use them to criticise laboratory studies may be unfair
   • The scoring of the interviews were done conservatively, with some inaccuracies noted even when the response in fact made sense