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Understanding Eye Witness Testimony Factors | Importance of Schemas

Explore the impact of reconstructive memory and schema-driven errors on eye witness testimony. Discover how leading words, weapon focus, anxiety, and age affect perception. Learn how witnesses filter information and the role of past experiences in shaping testimonies.

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Understanding Eye Witness Testimony Factors | Importance of Schemas

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  1. Eye Witness Testimony EWT

  2. What is EWT? • An eye witness is anyone who has witnessed an event (usually a crime). • Testimony is a statement given by the witness as an account of what happened.

  3. How may factors affecting perception affect EWT? • Reconstructive memory • Schema driven errors (Bartlett) • Effect of leading words • Reconstructive hypothesis (Carmicheal) • Other factors (More in AS and A2) • Weapon focus • Effects of anxiety/arousal • Age of witness www.psychlotron.org.uk

  4. Reconstructive Memory • Bartlett (1932) • Memory is not a direct record of what was witnessed • What is encoded and how it is retrieved depends on: • Information already stored in memory • How this info is understood, structured and organised www.psychlotron.org.uk

  5. Reconstructive Memory • Schemas • Knowledge structures that relate to commonly encountered objects, situations or people • Enable us to predict events, make sense of unfamiliar circumstances, organise our own behaviour • Act as filters to perception & recall www.psychlotron.org.uk

  6. Computer Information Processing BANG! Can you wreck a nice beach? www.psychlotron.org.uk

  7. Can you wreck a nice beach? Schema Driven Processing Yes. I can recognise speech. www.psychlotron.org.uk

  8. Input Schema Output ‘Pickaxe’ ‘Turf cutter’ Carmichael (1932) www.psychlotron.org.uk

  9. EWT: Schema Driven Errors • Witnesses to crimes filter information during acquisition & recall • Their schematic understanding may influence how info is both stored & retrieved • Distortions may occur without the witness realising www.psychlotron.org.uk

  10. EWT: Schema Driven Errors • Past experiences • Assumptions about what usually happens • Stereotypes & beliefs about crime & criminals www.psychlotron.org.uk

  11. Look at this picture

  12. Write down a description of what is happening in the picture

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