There is research to suggest eyewitness testimony is reliable, especially focusing on child eyewitnesses and their identification of criminals. Anastasi and Rhodes proved that children recognise their own age groups better. 

Anastasi and Rhodes found that all age groups are most accurate when recognising an offender from their own age group. If a child observes another child committing a crime they would be more reliable in their identifications. 

This research demonstrates that eyewitness testimony from children is reliable especially when identifying their own age group. This is proven as children have the need to be helpful and therefore would not lie or exaggerate. A further reason children would be reliable to identify their own age is because they recognise and could give specifics about their looks.

 

    There is evidence that eyewitnesses are reliable, an example of this is Loftus (1979). 

    Loftus researched on post event information. She showed participants slides of a man stealing a bright red purse from a woman’s bag, they were then exposed to information containing subtle/major errors, such as, the purse being brown and 98% of the participants correctly remembered that the purse was red. 

   This suggests/demonstrates that key details may be more resistant to distortion from post event information than previously suggested.

            Loftus and Zanni asked their participants two questions, ‘did you see a broken headlight’ and did you see the broken headlight’. They found that 7% said yes who were asked the question ‘did you see a broken headlight’. Whereas 17% said yes who were asked ‘did you see the broken headlight’.

            To conclude, the findings show that even the smallest of change in the wording of the question can influence a person’s response. This suggests that whenever a witness is questioned, either by the police, lawyers, friends etc, their recollection of the actual event may be distorted.

 

There is research to support the idea that eye witnesses are reliable. During his research he discussed the use of children in eye witness testimonies. He found that children between the ages of 6 and 7, and 10 and 11, are fairly accurate in their memories of an event, they do not usually ‘make things up’ and they do not tend to lie when giving testimonies. In addition, their memory for important details is not significantly altered be adult suggestion after the event. These conclusions challenge many of the claims made by other researchers. This research demonstrates that eye witness testimonies in children are reliable because they don’t add unnecessary or fake details and memory don’t get distorted by adult suggestion.    

Yarmey supports that eyewitness accounts are not reliable.

 

Yarmey (1993) got 240 students to observe 30 videos of unknown males and classify them as ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’. Most of the participants came up with the same answers, suggesting that there is similarity in people’s schemes of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. In the same way any ideas about the facial features of criminals may influence us when making decisions on suspects in a line-up or photo array. This suggest that eyewitnesses may not select the actual criminal, but the individual who looks most like a criminal.

 

This shows that eyewitness accounts can be unreliable as people schemes (stereotypes) can prevent people from choosing the actual suspect. 

 

There is research to support that children’s eyewitness is not reliable.

A meta-analysis by Pozzulo & Lindsay drew data from a number of studies that between them had tested over 2,000 participants. 

The researchers found out that children under the age of 5 were less likely to than older children or adults to make correct identifications, due to wanting to please the researcher. 

They may also be influenced by TV programmes, so this could affect their schemas. 

Research has also shown that children aged between 5-13 did not differ significantly from adults. 

Children, when asked a question, were more than likely to make a choice, which ended in a false positive. This is due to them wanting to please the researcher. 

 

To conclude, according to Pozzulo & Lindsay, child eyewitnesses are not reliable, due to them being more sensitive, feeling like they can’t say no. 

 

 

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