Outline and evaluate the research into eyewitness testimony.

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Outline and evaluate the research into eyewitness testimony.

There has been a vast amount of interest into eyewitness testimony (EWT). EWT investigate the accuracy of memory following a crime or incident worth interrogating and the types of errors make in such situations.

Sometimes EWT can be unreliable, which can lead to horrific consequences in a court of law.

Rattner (1988) reviewed 205 cases of wrongful arrest (such as the case of Edward Honaker) and found that in 52% of cases, this was due to mistaken EWT.

Baddeley (1997) has reported that 74% of suspects were convicted in 300 cases where EWT was the only evidence against them.

Problems can occur at any point in the memory process, whether it is during acquisition, during storage or during retrieval. A number of different types of research have been pursued to understand the reasoning for mistaken and unreliable EWT, anxiety being one of them.

When considering the reliability of EWT, it is important to bear in mind the type of crime that is being recalled. Some crimes, such as those involving violence, are associates with high levels of anxiety in victims or onlookers. Whether anxiety