Age and Eyewitness Testimony

568 Words3 Pages
Research into accuracy of CHILDREN as eyewitnesses: 1. Roberts and Lamb: P: They analysed 161 police interviews with children regarding allegations of abuse. F: In 68 / 161 of the interviews the interviewer misinterpreted “in private” as “in the privates” and in 2/3 of these cases this remained uncorrected by the children. C: Therefore, this research would suggest that people of a young age do not have accurate eye witness testimony. 2. Parker and Carranza: P: Compared primary school children and college students in their ability to identify a target individual after a slide sequence of a mock crime F: Child witnesses had a higher rate of choosing that adults but they were more likely to make errors C: Concludes that children aren’t more accurate witnesses than adults The following research has looked and the elderly and the accuracy of eye witness testimony: 3. Cohen and Faulkner: * They showed 70 year olds and 35 year olds a film of a kidnapping * Then presented them with misleading details before asking them to recall what happened in the film. F: They found that the 70 years olds were more likely to be mislead than the 35 years old. C: Therefore, this research would suggest that people of an old age do not have accurate eye witness testimony. 4. Coxon and Valentine: * They asked children (aged 8 ), young adults (aged 17) and older adults (aged 70) questions containing misleading information after they had watched a video. * They then asked a further 20 specific questions to assess whether they had accepted the misleading information or not. F: They found that the older adults were less suggestible and were the only age group not to show a statistically significant misinformation effect. C: Therefore, this research would suggest that people of an old age do have accurate eye witness testimony. 5. Memon:

More about Age and Eyewitness Testimony

Open Document