In my opinion I do not believe that eye witness testimonies should be the sole evidence in a court case. Mainly because like Scott Fraser said eye witness identification is foul. There is up to 280 documented cases where people have been wrongfully convicted of a crime. Three quarters of those cases involved only eye witness identification testimonies during the trial that convicted them. He said that even under the best observation conditions we can only detect and store bits and pieces of the entire experience in front of us.…
Memory plays significant role in eyewitness identification by retrieving the correct information, its performance should be sound, reliable and accurate for eyewitness line-up identification . There is a big difference between reliable memory and unreliable memory. Reliable memory however, is the consistency and justice, thus; accuracy in recalling coding/ decoding the right event from the past, and accurately identifying the right suspect as he / she ’s the right offender with strong confidence without interferences.…
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…
Common criminal cases rely heavily on eyewitness memory resulting in inaccurate prosecutions. According to memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus, a person can develop false memories, but believe them to be accurate. Elizabeth analyzed one case where a man was falsely convicted of rape because a woman identified him as “the closest” looking to the rapist. Eventually, a journalist studied the man’s case and found the real rapist that had committed fifty or more rapes in that area. About three hundred people have been falsely convicted of a crime due to false memories, that later was proved innocent based on DNA testing.…
The aim of this study was to test the effect that schemas have on memory, eyewitness memory in particular. This was carried out by the replication of Loftus’s and Palmer’s (1974) study on schemas and eyewitness testimony. Participants in this study were high school students from the 11th grade that volunteered to take part in the experiment. This replication involved having participants divided into two conditions: the first condition would watch a video of an automobile accident, then would answer a questionnaire about the video, including a question that asked to estimate the cars’ speed when they smashed into each other; while the second condition would watch the same video and answer the same questionnaire, with the key difference being…
After watching How reliable is your memory? by Elizabeth Loftus, I believe that to a great extent, memory is not a reliable source of knowledge because it can be distorted, contaminated, and even falsely imagined. Memory decay, distorted memory, hindsight bias, consistency bias, the availability heuristic bias and suggestibility- are all problems that beset our reliance on memory. “I was there. I saw it.”…
An issue in developmental psychology that is a common topic of research is the question of whether or not the testimony of young children can be trusted. Can they recognize perpetrators or even remember events accurately? The answers to these questions should inform how children are questioned as eyewitnesses in the courtroom, and since many people aren’t as educated in this topic, it important for a policy to be implemented to ensure that findings from recent research are being used to effectively utilize children as eyewitnesses. There are three main topics of applicable research that I will discuss in this paper, and they are: use of initial exhaustive recall to avoid retrieval-induced forgetting, eye closure in recalling events, and repeating…
Psychologist’s claim that the human memory is not reliable and it’s because of this that there have been circumstances that have affected the accuracy of the Eye Witness Testimony. Many factors that have been found to affect the EWT some include emotional stress, misleading information and post-event discussion. One source shows an experiment by Loftus and Palmer (1974) who researched the theory that misleading questions could affect the EWT. They showed participants a video of a car crash and then asked them questions about the crash by changing the words they used to describe the car colliding.…
One study showed how eyewitness memory can be unreliable by examining the effects of arousal and expectation on eyewitness memory. The study exposed 97 participants to a captivating eyewitness experience by creating four virtual real world stimulus environments. Randomly assigned participants were assigned to four conditions: non-arousing and expected, and non-arousing and unexpected, arousing and expected, arousing and unexpected. Later, results showed that memory performance in an arousing confrontation showed much lower than that for a non-arousing encounter. Memory performance for an unexpected environment also showed significantly lower than that of an expected encounter.…
Memory is a cognitive process whose reliability is often questioned, especially in its importance in eyewitness testimonies. Eyewitness testimonies refers to an account given by people who have witnessed a specific event. Eyewitness testimonies are also one of the major areas of research for cognitive psychology and memory. Eyewitness testimonies are vital factors used, in legal systems, as evidence for criminal trials. These testimonies rely on the accuracy of human memory to decide whether a person is guilty for a crime or not.…
An eyewitness memory is a person’s episodic memory for an event that he or she has witnessed. School-age children are likely to give a more accurate description of past experiences compared to preschoolers. Many factors become apparent when investigating the memory errors in young children. For example, when a preschooler is asked a question that is too complexed for their understanding, the preschooler will still answer the question as if they know the answer. Preschoolers also have the desire to please others, so if they are asked a yes-or-no question, they will most likely agree to the question despite everything.…
Eyewitness testimony is the examination of how precisely an individual might analysis critical occasions that they have visually perceived happening. In the situation of an individual optically discerning a crime, it’s extremely vital that the promulgation they give of data is accurate, as in a court their proof will impact jurors’ decisions (Green et al, 2009). By considering witness testimony, therapists have possessed the capacity to see the reasons for erroneous reports made by witnesses; this examination can demonstrate the court that so much weight shouldn't be put on a witness’s record, and can counteract mistakes happening so every now and again in the equity framework (Green et al, 2009). The principle ranges that therapists accept may influence the memory are reconstructive memory, driving request in gatherings, and effects from fear or uneasiness. Research into these regions empowers experts to perceive how the mind and memories of a witness declaration limits, in this way to…
Suggestion can play an even more subtly role in witness memory distortion, by simply providing an affirming response after a persons testimony can solidify their memory even if it is distorted. This finding was confirmed through the experiments of Wells and Bradfield, in which they showed that by providing positive affirmation after a participant misidentified a culprit the participant claimed higher confidence and trust in their memories. These findings have lead law enforcement to try and implement broader questions during interrogations in order to control for…
Existing research studies show that victims or eyewitnesses’ memories may be influenced by several factors, thus, leading them to wrongfully identify an individual as the suspect or perpetrator (McGrath & Turvey,…
Memories of the initial event can be effected by events and suggestions that occurred afterwards also known as post event misinformation effect (Gerry et al, 2005). The particular way in which a question was asked, the type of feedback given, social pressure to do the right thing, and the time delay between the event and the testimony can all affect accurate information (Matlin, 2012). The relationship between eyewitness memory and recall is minimal. A person may appear confident in their memories, but actual recall of events is lacking.…