There were, however, many flaws and omissions in the design of the experiment. Firstly, there was no statement or detailed description given of the Independent Variables (IVs) being used for this design. Neither was it said what the conditions were. It simply lists two “between-subject factors – age and experimental condition”. Likewise, the Dependent Variable (DV) was not stated explicitly, but it was described how it would be measured.
There are two major omissions in the design of this experiment. Firstly, there was no description of any controls used in order to improve the experiment. Whether they were simply not listed, or whether there were none taken, is unclear. Secondly, and more importantly, the study as outlined in the report would be totally unreplicable. There is no detailed information or script provided to inform the reader what exactly happened in the video. Furthermore, there is no list of the questions that were verbally given to the participants and no information on how these questions were constructed.
Further questions must be raised about the appropriateness of the stimulus materials used. The video chosen consisted of a kidnapping of a newly born baby from a hospital ward. Coxon and Valentine quote previous research from Goodmann et al (1990) as their reason for choosing this topic, saying that fear of separation from loved ones is a central concern for children. It is true that children tend to remember a topic that is of interest or importance to them, (Powell & Thompson, 2001), but it is questionable if the young children would relate to what was happening in the video. This is particularly questionable due to the fact that they were not watching a scene involving their loved ones.
The choice of length of video (three minutes) appears to be a good one, insomuch as young children can only concentrate for a few minutes and a longer video could have been problematic. We have no idea, however, how long the questioning after the video took, which may have had a negative impact on the findings of the group of young children.
As a result of the flaws we have observed, we may describe the design of the report as highly problematic.
Findings
The next section of the article presented the findings of the experiment. It was found that both the elderly and child participants gave fewer correct answers and more incorrect answers to non-misleading questions than did young adults. Children were found to be more susceptible to suggestibility than either the elderly or young adults. There was no relationship found between the accuracy of recall and suggestibility.
We are told that when the data was collected, there was no significant difference between each age group to the non-critical questions asked. The data was therefore combined, using the experimental condition as the IV. A one-way ANOVA was used. We are not, however, given any information on the original data collected to witness for ourselves the lack of significant difference between the age groups. Despite this, the remainder of the results were well presented and the differences in responses to the misleading questions may be clearly observed in the tables provided.
In their interpretation of the results, Coxon and Valentine say that their findings have demonstrated that young children and elderly people “perform less accurately than young adults on questions about an event viewed on video” (p.14). As we have noticed earlier, however, due to the lack of information on the video and system variables such as questions asked verbally, we have no way of knowing whether these results are accurate or have been influenced by the researcher. Likewise, there was quite a large inconsistency between the groups regarding the proportion of males to females. As yet, studies have been inconsistent as to whether the sex of a witness may have some bearing on the reliability of their ‘testimony’ (Wescott & Brace, 2002), but this may, also, have some bearing on the outcome of the results.
Despite this, Coxon and Valentine’s findings are strengthened insofar as they are consistent with the findings of List (1986). Furthermore, Coxon and Valentine are aware that the participants’ level of education may have had some bearing on results: “the present study may have exaggerated the advantage shown by young adults” (p14). Coxon and Valentine’s findings were inconsistent, however, with those of Bekerian and Bowers (1983), who found that questioning participants with questions preserving the order of occurrences in the original event minimised the effects of misleading information. Their findings, that post event information does not make participants any more unsure than they normally would be about their memories of an event is an important one, and contributes to the store of knowledge on this topic.
Likewise, Coxon and Valentine mentioned that their findings showed that children can resist post event suggestions concerning some event information equally as well as adults. This is important research for legal team defending children. It is unfortunate, however, that we are not shown the results which were used to back up this claim, and what is more obvious from the descriptive statistics given is that the credibility of the child witness is low.
Methodology
At this point, we will evaluate Coxon and Valentine’s study under three main headings – ethics, ecological validity and generalizability.
There was no mention of any ethical guidelines followed in this study or even of any considerations taken into account. As we observed earlier, Coxon and Valentine used the topic of fear of separation from loved ones in the video, believing it to be a central concern for children. It is questionable as to whether the children did relate to this fear of separation during their viewing of the tape. If they did, however, there was no description or information given on any ethical actions taken to protect the children. Likewise, there are ethical issues to be raised concerning the misuse of misleading questions during the study and the damage caused to participants’ self-esteem when they realise that they have been deceived. Indeed, Coxon and Valentine do not give any mention to the debriefing session.
The ecological validity of the study may be considered in doubt. Although it is difficult to judge the merits of the events portrayed in the video due to the lack of information, it is reasonable to assume that the stimulus may have been too far removed from the reality of an actual event. The use of video may have been chosen, however, to spare real victims the trauma of being used for research.
The generalizability of the study was positive insofar as the findings could be applied to the larger population involved in legal proceedings where eyewitness testimony is required. The only downside is that it may be used, not only by the prosecution, but also be defence lawyers to discredit the testimony of children.
So to conclude, we may say that Coxon and Valentine’s experiment well reflected the type of research being carried out in this area and used other researchers’ work as a base for her study. What was written was well presented and enabled the reader to follow the study, and lead to new discoveries in the area of witness evidence. It did, however, have many flaws and omissions, most notably the lack of information given about the materials used and any ethical guidelines followed. Nevertheless, it may be considered as a good starting place for discussion and further research in the area of witness evidence.
REFERENCES
Primary Sources:
Coxon, P. and Valentine, T. (1997). ‘The effects of the age of eyewitnesses on the accuracy and suggestibility of their testimony’ on Book 3 Offprints CD-Rom (2002), DSE212 Exploring Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
Westcott, H. and Brace, N. (2002) ‘Psychological factors in witness evidence and identification’ in Applying Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
Secondary Sources:
Berkerian, D.A. and Bowers, J.M. (1983) ‘Eyewitness testimony: were we misled? In Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, vol. 9, pp139-145.
Ceci, S.J. and Bruck, M. (1993) ‘Sugguestibility of the child witness: a historical review and synthesis’ in Psychological Bulletin, vol. 113, pp. 403-39.
Ceci, S.J. et al (2001) ‘Children’s suggestibility research: implications for the courtroom and the forensic interview’ in Westcott, H.L. et al (2001) Children’s testimony: A handbook of Psychological research and forensic practice, Chichester, Wiley.
Goodmann, G.S., Rudy, L., Bottoms, B.L. and Aman, C. (1990). ‘Children’ s concerns and memory: issues of ecological validity in the study of children’s eyewitness testimony’ in Fivush, R. and Hudson, J.A. (eds.) Knowing and remembering in young children, pp 249-284, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Powell, N. and Thompson, D. (2001) ‘Children’s memories for reported events’ in Westcott, H.L. et al (2001) Children’s testimony: A handbook of Psychological research and forensic practice, Chichester, Wiley.
List, J.A. (1986) ‘Age and schematic differences in the reliability of eyewitness testimony’ in Developmental Psychology, vol 22, pp. 50-57.
