The Honest Liars

Overview

Objectives/Goals The goal of the study is to find out how accurate observation is done by eyewitness. Hypothesis: I believe that eyewitness is not accurate and their details are sometimes false. I think so because human memory is not perfect and as a famous psychologist Elizabeth Loftus an expert in eyewitness also believes that human memory is not perfect. Also, their full attention may not be directed at the crime scene. Therefore I believe observation of eyewitness is not accurate. Methods/Materials Method: 1. I recorded a family event and edited it into DVD video. 2. A group of subjects of different age groups were selected. 3. I show them the video on a DVD player in a fixed time. 4. The subjects answered questions related to the video Materials: Camcorder computer Pencil and Papers DVD (the video) Questions to be answered DVD player Results 46.2% or 288/624 of the total answers were correct. The color identification was 37% correct. The people identification was 48% right. The object identification 57% was correct. The females got 5.6/12 as their average answer and the males got a 5.3/12 as their average answer. For the three age groups, the children (12 or below) got 50% of all the questions asked, the teens (13-19) received a 46.6% of all the questions asked correct, and the adults resulted as a 44.1% out of the total questions asked. Conclusions/Discussion The overall results were poor since less than half of the questions were answered correctly. The accuracy for object identification was better than color identification and people identification. Although females scored higher than male, the results were very close, showing not much difference between the genders. For the three age groups, the children's results were the best. However, it was only a small insignificant difference. But it shows that children's memory are as reliable as adults. My hypothesis was correct. Human memory is not very reliable and should be taken into consideration when admitted as evidence.

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Behavioral Sciences · Entry J0320

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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