Eyewitness Testimony

The Importance of the Accuracy of Children’s Eyewitness Testimonies

An Eyewitness testimonial is a legal term that refers to an account of events given by a witness. These eye witness accounts are important and significant because they are sometimes considered to be direct evidence in court. The justice system takes eyewitness testimonies into strong consideration when they determine a verdict. Thus, the matter of the accuracy of testimonies, especially in children, raise questions because of the weight it holds in the final verdict.

Discussion of Relevant Information

Loftus was one of the first to do research on leading questions and eyewitness reports. Loftus (1975) conducted an experiment to show how word choices in questions asked directly

They focused on how many times a question was asked and the time length between repeating the question. In the experiment, the students watched an event and was asked questions following the event. Later the children were asked the same questions again. Results showed that all ages showed a negative shift in repeated questions responses regardless of how many times it was repeated and how long it took to be repeated. Further results showed that gender did not play a role in the accuracy nor consistency in children’s testimonies but age did. Accuracy and consistency increases with age. Repeated questions have a negative impact on children’s performance in an interview process because they feel as if their answers are incorrect due to the redundant questions. Children also had a hard time saying that they did not know an answer to a question. Children are not likely to change their answer to a question that they are sure about no matter how many times they have been asked the same

Loftus (1975) and Krahenbuhl, Blades and Eiser (2009) both used the same method to measure their subject’s accuracy and consistency in their testimonies. They all used the method of having subjects watch a video on an event than test their accuracy and consistency by the answers from a questionnaire. Perry et al. (1995) took a different approach on the accuracy and consistency of eyewitness testimonies. Unlike the others, this study put children in a court situation to examine how the lawyerese question would impact the accuracy and consistency. These tactics put children in a real courtroom scenario. Questions were asked with the use of negatives, rapid shifts, etc., to demonstrate how lawyers would interact with children in court. Although there were different methods, these articles all came together and proved that eyewitness reports are not completely accurate and consistence especially in