Testing the Accuracy of Eyewitnessed Accounts

One of the reasons that eyewitness evidence is so unreliable is because human memory is very open to suggestion. In fact, just asking about something can alter our memory. (1) For example, in the 80-90’s, many psychotherapists were

Eyewitness testimony is generally seen as reliable, but as of lately research has found psychological factors that affect one’s testimony. They are anxiety/stress, reconstructive memory, and leading questions. A study was conducted on the impact of anxiety and life stress upon eyewitness testimony; subjects completed self-reports, an eyewitness task, and a self-preoccupation scale to determine the relationship. Results showed that anxiety and preoccupation limits the eyewitness’s ability to perform; a highly anxious individual may miss important cues that are task-relevant (Seigel & Loftus 1978). Other cognitive processes like perception, imagination, and semantic memory influence reconstructive memory the act of remembering. Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory is understood that an eyewitness testimony is influenced by what is learned or cultural norms. We store information in a way that makes the most sense to us, organizing information into schemas, mental units of knowledge that correspond to people, objects, or situations that are close to us (Wagoner 2013). When in a police interrogation, leading questions can provide misinformation that causes the witness to question everything they saw and whether or not they are saying the right thing. A study was conducted on a number of subjects that saw a complex and fast moving event. They immediately after were asked questions that suggested information that was necessarily correct due to the wording of the question (Loftus

A study done in 2005 showed that when 30 statements regarding eyewitness issues, jurors disagreed with memory experts in 87% of the issues, and judges disagreed with 60% of the issues (Benton et al. 117). Therefore, even though jurors and judges agreed with memory experts on more statements regarding “memory myths” than did jurors, their understanding of these memory myths still greatly deviated from memory experts; which shows the uninformative nature of juror and the

Eyewitness testimony is a hot button issue in not only the criminal justice field but also the psychology field as well. It continues to be argued that this type of “evidence” is far too unreliable for the court room and can ultimately end up punishing the wrong person for a crime they did not commit. The influence of an eyewitness testimony cannot be denied as research has showed that, “adding a single prosecution eyewitness to a murder trial summary increased the percentage of mock jurors’ guilty verdicts from 18 to 72” (Leippe, Manion, & Romanczyk, p. 182, 1992). In the article discussed here, researchers will look into various age groups to see if age has an effect on the credibility of eyewitness testimonies while attempting to discern what certain cues build upon such credibility.

Eyewitness testimonies are based on a person’s ability to recall what took place accurately. Memory research has proven that a person’s memory is not a recording but it is reconstructive. Loftus and Palmer’s study set out to prove that the memory could be reconstructed through the use of language.

The concepts that are covered in the experiment: “Testing the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony” are how the memory part of your brain works. Also, the colors that help memorization is also included in this experiment.Another thing that is covered in this experiment is whether or not someone is able to regurgitate information back after 20 minutes. Another thing that is covered in this experiment is the types of memory disorders. Tips on how to keep a healthy memory are also included. Also, the steps to creating a new piece of memory is also covered in this experiment. Another thing that is included in the experiment is the timeline as to how we know memory today got there.

In the late 19th-century research on eyewitness, testimony memory began, psychologists had been studying memory, and the findings became useful for forensic psychology and law. A central issue with studying eyewitness memory and testimony is the ecological validity of lab studies. There are relatively few ‘real world’ eyewitness memory studies, and that causes problems for determining the generalizability of findings in eyewitness memory. Coined by Wells (1978) estimator variables are present at the time of a crime and cannot be changed (i.e. witness characteristics and the type of offence) and system variables are factors that can be manipulated to affect eyewitness accuracy (i.e. line-up procedures and interview types). The system variables

There are many factors to consider when psychologists and scientists are trying to figure out reliability of eyewitness testimony. The ability to recall or

Eyewitness Identification may be more reliable than we believe, if they are handled and assessed correctly. Eyewitness testimonies are often used by law enforcement officers to identify suspects and play a huge role in getting convictions. If witnesses identify the wrong person, an innocent man could be punished for something they had no involvement in. There are many theories to explain why witnesses may identify the wrong person as the perpetrator of a crime. The different ways we retrieve memories affects what we remember. Other theories have to deal with how lineups or photo arrays are displayed to the witness and the effect they have on the result. All of the different theories of how our memories can be influenced, cause people to argue

There are many different factors that play a part in the increased chance of a witness correctly identifying a suspect. Such factors should be brought to the attention of the jury and the judge to help in properly assessing whether a witness is correctly identifying a suspect. A study by Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja (2010) found that of the three different types of people: judge, jury, and general public, that for the most part all where fairly ill-informed on the reliability of eyewitness testimony with judges having the most. Judges only had about an 8% difference in knowledge when compared to jurors. With this information it is very clear that education on the reliability of eyewitness testimony needs to become more of a general knowledge information for the everyone, especially people who are involved in upholding the law. Another factor to look into when evaluating the accuracy eyewitness testimony is the role that memory plays. Memory is divided into three processes: perceiving, remembering, and recalling information (Simmonsen, 2013). There is plenty of room in all three of those stages to forget or falsely remember something. Some factors that play a part when a person perceives an event is the amount of time they are exposed to the event and the suspect. A study conducted by Horry, Halford, Brewer, Milne, & Bull. (2014) found that witnesses were increasingly more likely to correctly identify a suspect if they had been exposed to the suspect for sixty

“Wrongfully convicted at age 25, Calvin Johnson received a life sentence for the rape of a Georgia woman after four different women identified him. Exonerated in 1999, he walked out of prison a 41-year old man. The true rapist has never been found, (The Justice Project).” Eyewitness testimony is highly relied on by judges, but it can not always be trusted. Approximately 48% of wrong convictions are because of mistaken identity by eyewitnesses (The Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony). After we discovered this information, we became curious as to whether in a testimony, the eyewitness’ memory is more reliable after a short period of time or after a longer period of time? According to previous experiments, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Likely, we want to know if a testimony that is given two to three hours after a crime has taken place is more reliable than a testimony given after a longer period of time.

In 1907, Hugo Munsterberg published ‘On the Witness Stand’, in which he questioned the reliability of eyewitness identification. When Yale Law professor Edwin Borchard studied 65 wrongful convictions for his pioneering 1932 book, ‘Convicting the Innocent’, he found that eyewitness misidentification was the leading contributing factor of wrongful convictions. Research illustrates that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. In eyewitness identifications, witness memory is impacted by a variety of factors that occur from the time of the crime onwards, and their memories can be easily contaminated. This is linked with the concept of ‘false memories’ they are events recalled by a witness that did not actually happen.

The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony Part 1 - How reliable is Eyewitness testimony? The Reconstructive nature of memory - Schemas and Stereotypes The reconstructive nature of memory is related to the schema theory. A schema is a package of memory that is organized and developed throughout our lives.

Loftus and Palmer support the reconstructive memory hypothesis. They believe that information gathered at the time of an icident is

Several early studies of memory explain how memories tend to create distorted accounts of previous experiences. Bartlett's 1932 study showed how schemas can generalize information, eliminating several details that make up the whole event. In his study, he used the method of serial reproduction to recreate an old Native American folktale, altering the story with each repetition. This experiment suggested that memory is not an identical reproduction of an experience, but a combination of actual events with already existing schema. This connects with eye witness testimony in that memories can be distorted, changed to support what makes sense to the witness, therefore leading to the questioning of reliability in