Eyewitness And Memory Paper

After a crime occurred eyewitnesses are commonly used to determine what happened and to hold the person who committed the crime responsible. The role of the eyewitness is endless; it could range from tasks like identifying the criminal, making a mug shot of the criminal and explaining the actions that happened (Frowd, et al, 2008). Although we use eyewitness to get information about what happened, the person’s memory is not always accurate (Odinot, Wolters, & van Giezan, 2012). Some factors that contribute to memory being fallible are misleading information while the witness is being interviewed (Odinot, Wolters & van Giezen, 2012) and how soon the witness is interviewed (Wang, Paterson, & Kemp, 2014).
An individual’s mind can easily be changed
A benefit of immediate recall from the eyewitness is that the information will be purely from his or her own memory, versus being influenced by other factors such as post- event information (Wang, Paterson & Kemp, 2013). In addition, the amount of times the witness is questioned can also contribute to inaccurate reports. The witness memory can have more problem retrieving facts that were not mentioned during prior interviews. It instead just restores the information that the witness has already given and makes the memory more stable. It could also have the opposite affect and make the witness recall different actions that occurred each time questioned about the crime. Odiont, Wolters & van Giezan (2012), tested the effect of questioning participants multiple times as well as over a specific duration. The study showed that participants had lower accuracy when he or she was questioned much later, but did not show a significant decrease in amount of recalled information. The repeated questioning also did not affect the participant’s ability to correctly recall the event