The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony Essay

The aim of Loftus and Palmer’s study was to investigate how language can be used to manipulate or distort one’s memory in an eyewitness testimony.

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.

While the cognitive interview does prove to be effective in increasing the amount of accurate information elicited from witnesses of crimes, it does not necessarily increase the credibility of eyewitness testimony by reducing memory error and confabulations. The cognitive interview has been shown to elicit more information than the standard interview, but the two types do not differ on incorrect information or confabulations

Credability of Eyewitness Testimony Is Eyewitness testimony reliable and accurate? Include case studies to back this up. EWT refers to evidence supplied by people who witness a specific event or crime, relying on their own memory. Statements often include descriptions given in a criminal trial and subsequent identification by individuals who were present at the crime scene. EWT is likely to dependent on reconstructive memory(Bartlett,1932) which describes how memory is more than a passive recall.

Research into false memory has been carried out to determine how reliable the memory can be. Loftus (2003) looked at eyewitness memory and how accurate it can be. In one study Loftus showed films of traffic

When an individual encounters an event or situation, they seek to understand it by relating it to a schema. Schemas are useful not only in providing meaning in an experience, but also filling in the gaps resulting from a failure to notice all the details of an event or situation. However, reliance on schematic knowledge can lead to memory error, hence causing an individual to remember the

False Memories and Eyewitness Testimony Once in a while we all like to reminisce and think of the past at some point. We remember our favorite toy, our best friends, favorite movie, and past memories, but what if what we think we know is just something that our mind has created for us. That specific event that we were so certain happened never actually did. We remember the colors the smells the people that were there, but it never really happened.

There has been substantial research done on areas of false memory and child suggestibility in eyewitness testimony. One relevant research is the study of “The origin of children’s implanted false memory” by Henry Otgaar, Bruno Verschuere, Ewout H. Meijer, and Kim van Oorsouw. In this article, Otgaar et al. (2012) conducted a study to determine whether implanted false memories in children represent actual memory traces or are they merely a result of compliance. Participants consisted of forty-five children, both males and females between the ages eight and ten, from elementary schools in the Netherlands. At the start of the experiment, the researchers interviewed each child individually about their memories from past events. During the interview, the children were presented with a true narrative about an experienced event (first day at school) first then followed by a false narrative about a fictitious event (hot air balloon

"A Room with an Overview: the Effects of Schematic Processing, Mood and Exposure Duration on Memory Accuracy," written by Andrea Vranić and Mirjana Tonković, talks about how memories are never exactly how people remember them and they are indeed, rehabilitated and distorted. The article explains the different aspects that improve the accuracy of a person's memory. The Schema Theory is explained in the article and states "Constructivism, as opposed to associationism, argues that people build new knowledge and understanding of reality from an interaction of their experiences and the knowledge and ideas they already have" (Vranić and Tonković 358-9). This theory expresses that when a schema, a representation of a plan, is experienced, then the

Throughout this IA, there will be a lot of mention of eyewitness testimony, memory and leading questions. Eyewitness testimony can be defined as ‘an account given by people of an event they have witnessed [1]’. Memory is ‘the mental faculty that enables one to retain and recall previously experienced sensations, impressions, information, and ideas [2]’, and leading questions are questions which are ‘asked in such a way to suggest the answer, or one that contains the information that the questioner is looking for

I will be discussing is eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed. Eyewitness testimony has been researched by many people, but Elizabeth Loftus was a major part in showing people that memory can be changed by suggestion. Remembering what happened in an accident or crime can be a major factor in an investigation. Loftus’s study showed that when people are being questioned about an event just the vocabulary used can affect their answers to a question. This shows not all information is accurate. It can limit an investigation and the outcome of a case. This has positively impacted my life because if I ever ask someone about what happened my words could affect their answers and

Memory is a reconstructive process, where someone recall information from the past that will be their autobiography and it can be affected by many different factors, and according to the first study provided below, all memories are wrong to some extent. But what is important for memories is whether we can differentiate between accurate and inaccurate ones. The first study has tested two different approaches on subjects, and neither were helpful in determining the validity of a memory. On the other hand, in the fourth study it was concluded that it is possible to assess whether a particular eyewitness is true or false based on the approach the witness used to recall the information. Also, it was found in the third research that subjects were

Eyewitness is the most important aspect for a criminal event that has occurred. Through eyewitness police or relevant forces might be able to get one step closer to catching the criminals. There is no age limit to provide testimony but in recent years, children’s testimonies are also acceptable in courtroom. This will be typically involving rape incident, abuse incident, and robbery incident and so on. There are more procedures involved in extracting information from affected children compared to an adult as children are more sensitive, also their mental state is still fragile. Studies have talked about the accuracy of statement given by children who witnesses the crime. In a nut shell researchers theorize that the pattern of questions asked to the eyewitness may affect the performance throughout the age group. A study done by Lipton, 1977 said that the type of

Evaluation of Research Into Eyewitness Testimony Eyewitness testimony investigates the accuracy of memory following a crime or an incident worth interrogating and the types of errors made in such situations. Sometimes eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, which can lead to horrific consequences in a court of law for example, hence many Psychologists have studied and theorized why this happens. One leading researcher on Eyewitness testimony is Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues, in 1975, participants were shown an event by film of a car crash, the participants were split into 2 groups and ask questions on what they had just seen, Group 1 were asked questions that were consistent with the

I personally believe that eyewitnesses are not reliable since there are a lot of things to take into consideration: bias, memory, character, etc. There is no formula to know whether someone is telling the truth with accuracy about the story that they are telling. For me is all how believable or if they believe the story that they are telling. The bigger and elaborate the story is, the more proof and evidence I require from the person that is telling the story. The more simplistic the story is, more than likely I will believe their story and accepted as the truth; now, if for some reason, I find something off-putting or do not believe their source, then I will not believe or trust his story or give them any type of credit. I truly think that we are fortunate and bless to have multiple gospels’ accounts available to us, and not including the ones that are from the Bible. This is good news for us because this way we compare and contrast with peoples’ testimony that took place at the same place and time. That being said, there are discrepancies between gospels when it comes to their religion’s opinions and the accuracy of the events that took place in history. Now, we must take into consideration of whether the authors knew about one another or if they did not hear about Jesus into later in their lives; however, if both authors are followers of Jesus’s word and they are real disciples, then one should be skeptical about what they say about the gospel.