Does age affect eyewitness testimony?

Does age affect eyewitness testimony?

Early quantitative reviews of age effects on eyewitness identification indicated that both children and older adults are as likely as young adults to identify the culprit when the person they are trying to identify is in the lineup, but young adults are more likely than their younger and older counterparts to correctly …

What is own age bias?

Abstract. Children recognize children’s faces more accurately than adult faces, and adults recognize adult faces more accurately than children’s faces (e.g., Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005). This is the own-age bias.

What predicts the own age bias in face recognition memory?

WHAT PREDICTS THE OWN-AGE BIAS IN FACE RECOGNITION MEMORY? To conclude, during passive free viewing, younger and older adults tended to spend more time looking at own-age than other-age faces, which is possibly related to greater self-relevance of, and social motivation for, faces of their own age group.

What is the own age effect related to face perception?

Abstract. Previous research on face recognition has shown an own-age effect, such that older adults are more adept at recognizing faces of their own age than younger faces, with the reverse (or a null effect) for younger adults.

Why is EWT reliable?

EWT is reliable: Cognitive interview – changes to modern policing methods mean they now focus on allowing pp’s to freely describe what they saw and do not ask as many questions. They may ask pp’s to give accounts from different perspectives in order to get an accurate description.

Are children better eyewitnesses?

The report compares research on memory and suggestibility in children and adults. Otgaar, note that children are assumed to be worse witnesses; less reliable in their recall, and more susceptible to false memories. As they grow, children learn more and more about their world.

Is EWT too unreliable to trust?

EWT refers to information given by a witness after seeing an event or crime occur. Jurors have to decide whether or not to convict someone based on the evidence presented in court, so inaccurate EWT may lead to the wrong person being convicted, or a guilty person getting away with a crime.

Why are EWT not reliable?

Schemas are therefore capable of distorting unfamiliar or unconsciously ‘unacceptable’ information in order to ‘fit in’ with our existing knowledge or schemas. This can, therefore, result in unreliable eyewitness testimony.

Why children are not good eyewitnesses?

Many studies have found that children go along with suggestions and agree that they remember something that is not true when a false memory is provided for them. Otgaar, note that children are assumed to be worse witnesses; less reliable in their recall, and more susceptible to false memories.

Why is EWT useful?

Eye witness testimony (EWT) is regularly a deciding factor for courts in the criminal justice system to ‘prove’ the guilt or innocence of the criminally accused. However, inaccuracies in EWT are common, accounting for about 75% of incorrect convictions later found to be innocent using DNA evidence.

Is eyewitness testimony unreliable to trust?

Are eyewitnesses reliable? They are mistaken far more often than people think. After a comprehensive two-year study of eyewitness testimony, the New Jersey Supreme Court concluded that it often leads to false identifications, and recently ordered new rules on how such testimony is treated in the courtroom.