Eyewitnesses Influence In Police Investigations

In police investigations, eyewitnesses are a major influence in solving the case as they may make or break the case. For this study, researchers Farhan Sarwar, Carl Martin Allwood, and Ase Innes-Ker, focused on the variables that may have biased or impacted the testimony of the eyewitness, such as how forensic specialists interacted with or questioned the eyewitness and free recall, which is when the details of the eyewitness’ experience is discussed repeatedly. By focusing on these aspects, researchers are able to test confidence accuracy in the eyewitness memory and analyze what influences the accuracy of the their memory of the crime. Confidence accuracy is the measurement of how confident the witness is with their judgments and how correct …show more content…
Researchers then told the participants that they were investigating human perception in forensic situations. The participants first watched the film and were then randomly put into one of the four conditions. The participants that were put into one of the three experimental conditions: lab discussion, family discussion, and retell, were given a schedule for five sessions within a 20-day period when they would have to retell the film. Participants in the lab discussion and retell conditions were to visit the laboratory, where they would be asked random questions about the film by an experimenter who was recruited specifically for the session portion of the experiment. The participants in the retell condition were instructed to simply tell what they remembered about the film to the experimenter as they recorded them. Participants in the family discussion condition were to have five discussions about the film in their home with family members. Participants were also allowed to discuss the film with friends but each discussion had to be with a different individual. In the control condition, participants were instructed not to discuss the film at all and return to the laboratory for a memory test after the 20 days were over. After the 20-day period, all 89 participants returned to the laboratory on the 24th or 25th day for their confidence judgments on recall …show more content…
With the results the researchers found, they concluded that people are able to describe the time-course of an event in a forensic situation very well, but they struggle with an accurate description of an individual. The explanation for this is that action or movements capture the witness’ attention and they are unintentionally blinded to detail information. However, confidence accuracy measures for the free recall show that confidence accuracy for action information is good. These results indicate that confidence can be reliable for action information in witness’ recall. Although there were risks of errors in repeated retellings over a period of three weeks, the overall results suggest that the effects on the memory would be positive and barely noticeable for confidence