# data[].attributes.body
Weapon
focus refers
to an eyewitness’
concentration on a
weapon to the omissionof
other details of a crime.  In crimeswhere a weapon is involved, it is usualfor
a witness to be able to describe the weapon in significantlymore
detail than the perpetratorholdingit.

Loftus Taco time study •In
this study the participants were shown a
series of slides of a customer in a restaurant.  In one version
of the slides, the
customer was holding a gun,
while in
the other the same customer held a checkbook. •Participants
seeing the gun
version tended to focus
primarily on
the gun.  Consequently
they were
less likely to be
able to identify the
customer in a
line up than those who
had seen the checkbook version. •This
shows that fear and stress caused by a dangerous weapon can affect a witness’s
memory recall. •Could
have extraneous variables – could have bad memory before hand so results aren’t
reliable. •Lacks
ecological validity. •Cant
generalise because some were able to identify them in a line up. Is
an ethical study – slides not real situation

Pickle •In
1997 a man
walked into a coffee shop in Toronto and threatened to kill a hostage unless
someone gave him some money. The
customers met the robber’s demands and therefore he released his hostage and
fled the scene. However what was unusual about this was that the hostage was in
fact a Goose which the perpetrator had brought with him and threatened to
choke. •The
witnesses were so stricken by the absurdity of what they had observed that they
had spent more time inspecting the goose than inspecting the robber. •This
illustrates how the presence of  an
obscure object can impair memory for the peripheral details of an event. The
idea is that eyewitnesses tend to focus their attention on striking or
informative objects within a visual scene, to the detriment of other important
details such as the identity of the perpetrator.

# data[].attributes.body
Another factor which affects the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies is facial recognition. For example, Ellis et al investigated whether the reaction time for matching internal features of familiar faces differs from external features. They found that complete faces were correctly named at 80%, internal features at 50% and external features at only 30%. Therefore, it shows that reaction times are faster when matching internal to external features of familiar faces, which supports the use of facial recognition. However, the faces eye witnesses have to recognise are usually faces they have only seen once which means the results of this study can't be applied to most eye witness testimonies. In addition, the study lacks ecological validity as it was conducted in a lab environment, meaning real eye witness testimonies may be different because of the amount of stress and emotion experienced when they see the offender's face which can't be replicated in a lab setting. On the other hand, not supporting the use of facial recognition is Nicola Brace, who studied forty-four students who acted as shoppers at a London supermarket, and attempted to use four different photo credit cards, two of which were legitimate and two fake, (all aged between eighteen and forty-five, and half male and half female). Six experienced shop assistants also volunteered to operate the tills and were told they were involved in a study to see how quickly they could process purchases made using photo credit cards. They found that only 36.4% of the cashier's decisions were correct on the loot credit cards they should have rejected. This shows that even with faces we can see right in front of us we can make mistakes. Facial recognition is useful to an extent as we may be able to gain some understanding of what the offender looks like, however there are many problems with it which may mean the information we receive is not true.

# data[].attributes.body
Eyewitness testimonies (EWT) as a whole are
flawed and improvements to the whole EWT process need to be made. Such errors often have
tragic consequences. According to the Innocence Project, a legal advocacy
group, about 75% of false convictions that are later overturned are based on
false eyewitness testimonies. In recent years, neuroscientists have documented
how these mistakes happen. It turns out that the act of summoning the past to
the surface actually changes the memory itself. The more you remember an event,
the less reliable that memory becomes. Eyewitnesses are repeatedly asked to
recall what they saw, but their answers are inevitably influenced by the
questions being asked. The result is more confidence in an increasingly less
accurate testimony. A test carried out by Dr. Brewer in which participants were
to identify criminals in short clips from 12 pictures. Normally, witnesses are
encouraged to take their time and carefully consider each possible suspect.
However Dr. Brewer only gave his participants two seconds to make their
decision and he also asked them to rate how confident they were about their
decision. Brewer’s version of the lineup led to a large boost in accuracy, with
improvements in eyewitness performance ranging from 21% to 66%. Even when
subjects were quizzed a week later, those who were forced to choose quickly
remained far more trustworthy. Instead of simply assessing our familiarity with
a suspect’s face, we begin searching for clues and guidance. Sometimes this
involves picking the person who looks the most suspicious, even if we’ve never
seen them before, or being swayed by the subtle hints of police officers and
lawyers. This shows that there is three main ways in which EWT can be improved:
repeating the testimony as little as possible, making more of an instant
judgement rather than deliberating and making sure that the questions,
responses, attitude or body language given by police officers, interrogators
etc. don’t give a hint towards any certain answer. However, even if these
improvements were implemented we still wouldn’t be able to completely trust
EWTs as human errors will still be there and these methods only improved the
accuracy by 66% in Brewer’s test.

# data[].attributes.body
The
reconstructive nature of our memory could be supported by factors such as
schemas, which alter encoded information to provide an inaccurate recall.
Schemas are cognitive phrasing, for example racial schemas may cause a person
to recall a black person committing the crime when the actual offender was white. Kleider et al (2007) showed
participants a man and a women performing stereotype-consistent then
stereotype-inconsistent actions and found during recall a reliance on schemas
to increase as memory faded over time (2 days). The results suggested that as
time increases, the effect of schemas increases. Particularly as eyewitness
recalls occur months after the incidents, there is a greater potential for
schemas to alter the accuracy of recall. However we can’t be certain either if
schemas played an effect in the study or whether people had poor memories,
particularly as this was a cognitive study meaning we can’t visually see the
cognitive functions of the brain, raising other [RH1] issues, as such, limiting
the validity of the overall approach. However it must be noted that Kleider also found that
visual scenes were typically well remembered. This raises questions about the
degree of effect that schemas have. Due to the distinctive nature of crime, a
person may remember and recall information more vividly than normal. Schemas
could therefore just ‘fill in the gaps’ to our memory rather than physically
change or interfere with our memory . Overman et al (2013) found significant
findings in light of this and to do with age. They found that older people who
have lower cognitive function than younger people had an increased schema-based
processing in recalling a crime scene. This again supports the idea that our
cognition relies on schemas like a leaning post to fill in the gaps where
information is missing. Particularly as older
people have a significant decrease in cognitive function, schemas may have a
significant function in aiding recall in older people. The evidence
above also suggests that our cognition uses schemas to ‘fill in the gaps’ to
our memory so it is unlikely that an accurate memory will be altered by schemas

# data[].attributes.body
Anotherfactor effecting the accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony is the theory of
flashbulb memory. Flashbulb memory is a vivid memory which usually is created
by experiencing a surprising and shocking event. Laboratory studies have
consistently found that older adults, especially those with below-average
frontal lobe function, are impaired in source memory relative to young.
Davidson, Cook and Glisky (2006) conducted a study which involved people
learning of the news of the 9/11 incidents. They asked people there memory of
what they witnessed, on two occasions. From their investigation, they found
that there wasn't a difference in memory a year after the event that than what
there was right after the event. Their results also suggest that the retention
of memory doesn't change with age. This study implies that eyewitness
testimonies may be quite accurate, as they are able to have a clear memory of
what happened, particularly if the source of the memory was very emotional or
of personal importance. One strength of this study is that it shows that memory
can be stored, proved by asking the same question one year later. However,
there are some limitations to this study. For example, it only shows a
correlation and not a causation. Supporting Davison, Cook and Glisky (2006), is
a study conducted by Brown and Kullic (1977). They found that flashbulb
memories are more likely to form if an individual experiences an unexpected or
shocking event. This study further supports the validity of eye witness
testimonies. However, there is research which challenges the validity of
eye witness testimonies. Bohannon III and John Neil (1988) conducted a study on
the recollection of memories for the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. Their
sample consisted of two independent groups who witnessed the disaster, on a
date close to the event and eight months after. Considering only the
participants who could recall the source of the news, on-going activity, and
place, researchers reported that less than 35% had detailed memories. The
research illustrates the individual differences there are in memory –for some eyewitness
testimony’s an event may leave a very
strong memory – such as being the victim of crime as it has emotional impact
-  but the research suggests that this is
not a consistent phenomenon therefore it cannot be assumed that an Eyewitness
account is accurate.