Outline and evaluate research into the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of eye witness testimony.…
Outline and evaluate research into the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (12 marks).…
Research suggests that anxiety and the age of witnesses can affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (EWT) for a variety of reasons. The age of a witness can affect the accuracy of eye witness testimony and it is thought that as a result, EWT is often inaccurate. Research by Geiselman and Padilla (1988) found that children were less accurate when reporting events of a filmed bank robbery than adults; despite this, other research has failed to find much of a difference between adults and children, especially when free recall instead of structured interview is used. Furthermore, Children appear to be more susceptible to leading questions than adults (Goodman & Reid, 1986), and younger children are more likely to incorporate misleading information into their memories of the events if they are asked the same question repeatedly (Leichtman & Ceci, 1995). Most research into the accuracy of children’s memory has come from laboratory research, therefore it allows for precise control of variables, the experiments can be replicated for reliability and the independent variables will be carefully constructed allowing good inference of cause and effect. On the other hand, lab experiments are artificial as the setting is not typical of real life situations, therefore lacking ecological validity. It is not just the memory of children that has been tested; Anastasi & Rhodes (2006) used participants aged 18 – 78 years and found that young and middle-aged participants were more accurate at recognising photographs than older participants. Furthermore, Yarmey (1984) and Cohen & Faulkner (1988) found older people made more recall errors than younger people. Both researches suggest that the memory and therefore EWT is probably as unreliable as a child’s.…
Many of which can affect the outcome of an identification. Just by simply changing a few ways they handle a witness they can avoid a misidentification. When conducting a lineup, the witness should be told that regardless of the outcome the lineup the investigation into the crime will continue on. After they completed the lineup the witness should complete a statement of confidence, stating how confident they are about the person they identified (Innocence Project, 2015). This way police can judge how the witness feels about the lineup. A police officer should have a good understanding of how a witness feels. According to Wells et al. (1998) researchers have realized that there is an importance in the confidence of the eyewitness. Even the Supreme Court has had eyewitnesses rate their certainty which has been taken into account of the eyewitness accuracy (p. 14). It can be intimidating going up in front of a courtroom. The confidence of a witness plays a huge part in court. Even if the suspect is the wrong one the jury is more likely to believe a confident witness over one who is…
Testimonials can come in different forms. Frequently, law enforcement will take statements from individuals who they believe may have information due to what they have seen or heard; however, the importance of testimonials in not necessary in the statement, but how, when, and by whom the information is obtained. It is of extreme importance that any witness that provides testimony is able to provide that same information under oath, without having an individual bear witness under oath, the prosecutor runs the risk of the statement being inadmissible (Worral, Hemmens, & Nored, 2012, p. 71). Examples of testimonials’ that are admissible would be affidavits and depositions, or testifying in a…
I would have to say that it depends on the eye witness. A human being has been proven to sometimes see things that are not actually there and believe things that never happened. The emotions that we have make us susceptible to having our perceptions skewed and out senses tricked. There's also the issue of someone lying for personal gain. That being said, I wouldn't say that eye witness testimony isn't reliable, but it can't be seen as infallible and should be able to hold up to a certain amount of scrutiny.…
Memory and Eyewitness Testimony are two concepts which are studied within the topic of cognitive psychology. It is important to investigate these processes to aid in the understanding of how individuals cognitively process ideas and how this may affect specific behaviors. From a psychological perspective, memory can be defined as, “The capacity to retain and store information” (holah.co.uk, 2006). The further researches into the topic of memory allow it to greatly contribute toward societies' legal system, specifically in the sense of Eyewitness Testimony. Individuals may feel confident towards their memory abilities but according to many researchers, one's memory is not always reliable. (Bartlett, 1932) believed that memory is unreliable due…
Eyewitness testimony or the testimonies given by eyewitnesses are often times used as evidence in court. A person who has seen a crime occur, mentions their account of what happened during the time a crime was committed. Typically, when people think of eyewitnesses, they think of adults as playing that role, but children also play an important part and serve as eyewitnesses as well. The testimonies given by the adult eyewitnesses and children eyewitnesses for many reasons, are problematic at times.…
How fearful are witnesses when they are asked to testify during a serious offense? (Circle one)…
Overall eyewitness evidence strength was further examined across prosecution outcomes in the eyewitness identification alone cases” (Flowe, 2011). When it comes to being a creditable source of being an eye witness there are many things that, factor how using someone’s testimony as accountable source. When it comes to linking and eyewitness testimony and the accusing someone under false pretenses there has been amplitude of research that has being placed into forensic psychology to help see how useful resources are when it comes to taking an eyewitness word. “The connection between erroneous eyewitness identification evidence and wrongful convictions has been the motivating force behind much research in forensic psychology” (Wells, 2006). When…
Eyewitness testimony has been used frequently over time in various situations. It sometimes holds more merit then some facts or evidence. Yet it is also the reason why many innocent people go to jail and criminals still walk free. Eyewitness testimony has been used for over 100 years. It has played a major part in convicting criminals, from the common thief to the most dangerous murderer. However, with the time between incident and testimony or even report can vary drastically, the quality of eyewitness testimony wasn 't really recognized as an issue until the 1970 's. With plenty of unsolved crimes and not enough evidence eyewitness testimony was all that was needed. Now with psychologists holding scientific studies to see if it is reliable;…
Historically, eyewitnesses have played a crucial role in arrests and convictions in New York, and elsewhere. Law enforcement, judges and juries have relied heavily on the statements and identifications of witnesses because they were actually present for, or otherwise a part of, a criminal offense. Recent studies have shown, however, that eyewitness testimony may not be as reliable as it was long thought to be.…
Eyewitness psychologist have conducted controlled laboratory experiments that occur in phases. In the first phase, the encoding phase, “participants view a staged event, a video of a stimulated crime, or a photo of a target” (Smith & Dufraimont, 2014, p. 200). This phase examines how the participants process details of a memory. Phase two, the recognition phase, requires participants to identify a target using target-present or target-absent identification procedures (Smith & Dufraimont, 2014). During a target-present procedure, a participant can make one out of two decisions. The participant can make a decision to identify the target (a “hit), or make a decision to reject the target (“a miss”). Similarly, a participant can make one out of two decisions for a target-absent procedure as well. The participant can make a decision to reject the suspect (“correct rejection”), or make a decision to identify the suspect (“false alarm”). The last phase consists of making sure that the participant is confident in his or her decisions (Smith & Dufraimont, 2014). Researchers than analyze the participants’ performance by “examining the proportion of [hit and false alarm decisions made] in target-present and target-absent conditions separately” (Smith & Dufraimont, 2014, p. 202). In order for this identification procedure to be used in criminal investigations, it should produce more hits than false alarms. However, because this procedure does not produce the idea ratio researchers turn to using more diagnostic measures and procedures (Smith & Dufraimont,…
According to the Innocence Project even after thirty years of social science eyewitness identification is often reliable. Research shows that the human mind is not at all like a tape recorder. People neither record events exactly as they see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Witness memory is comparable to other evidence in case in that it must be preserved carefully and retrieved very meticulously or else it can become…
Eyewitness testimony is one of the least reliable methods of identification our criminal justice system has. It has been shown through many different studies that eyewitness testimony can lead to faulty identification driven by false memories. Although this information is widely known, eyewitness testimony is still used as an important aspect of most criminal cases. Eyewitness testimony can make or break a defendant’s fate. The chapter illustrated important elements that often alter a witness's memory. Specifically, the chapter discussed how stress is able to change people’s memories negatively. Stress causes physiological responses that may cause witnesses to cling to details they do not remember accurately. If a witness thinks they saw a…