Eye witness testimony

Number of people found to be wrongly convicted by March 1940

Number of cases out of 40 where unreliable EWT was to blame

Estimator variables

System variables

The year of the Ronald Cotton case

The person who was guilty, not Ronald Cotton

What is Post Event Information?

What is the reconstruction principle?

Why do schemas cause unreliable EWT?

Study where 70 ppts were asked to give the race of the man who they thought was holding the razor - more than half said that it was the black man

Asking ppts what speed cars were going when they 'hit' each other rather than 'smashed into' each other determined the ppts judgement of speed

Asking ppts if they had seen 'the' broken headlight rather than 'a' broken headlight increased likelihood that ppts said yes

Findings show that you can have highly accurate and reliable recall despite leading questions

Yerkes-Dobson Law

MacLeod 1986

The greater the arousal, the more accurate the testimony

Those who saw a violent film had worse recall than those who saw a non-violent film (2 studies have this format)

Founder of weapon focus theory

Is more or less attention focussed on a weapon due to survival instincts, therefore reducing accuracy of recall?

Counter argument from Pickel 1998

Maas & Kohnen 1989

Loftus 1987 eye fixation data

Loftus 1987 main finding

witnesses to a real armed robbery of a bank had accurate and reliable recall even 15 months after the event

Strongest evidence for unreliability due to weapon focus provided by Steblay 1992 - what were his findings?