P13 : The Accuracy of Eyewitness Accounts
| Students | Marina Zheng
Abigail Green |
| School | HDSB - Maple Grove Public School - Oakville |
| Level | Junior 7/8 - Grade 8 |
| Group | Group 6 - Health Sciences I |
| Abstract | In every day life, eyewitnesses are used in court to help solve crime cases from scenes that they have witnessed. Are eyewitnesses a trustworthy evidence source? How do the court know they are telling the truth? This project examines the memory of sixteen grade eight students, over short and long periods of time. Three experiments were set up over eight days, to work around school schedules. First, all the students individually watched a trailer on the ?rst day of the experiment, then completed a quiz on what they saw directly after it was watched. The group was then divided into two groups, the ?rst group answered a quiz on what they saw in the trailer two days after the ?rst, and the second group answered the same quiz ?ve days after the ?rst. The hypothesis stated that no individual would answer either memory quiz given perfectly, male or female. The results supported what was stated in the hypothesis, as both genders answered each test with under 55% correct. The longer the time after the video, the lower the scores dropped with a drop of 13% for females and 9% for males in the last experiment. Knowing this information, eyewitnesses may mislead a case in court, which could give justice to the wrong argument! |