The following is the entry for the term Eyewitness Testimony that will appear in the new Encyclopedia of Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association in 1999.
Eyewitness testimony is the act of reporting from memory about an event previously observed.
In criminal cases, the justice system relies heavily on eyewitnesses to investigate crimes and to serve as trial witnesses to bring evidence against a defendant. In civil cases, eyewitnesses can be critical to reconstructing the details of previous events, such as accidents. Researchers in social and cognitive psychology have developed an extensive set of findings on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, most of this work being done since the mid 1970s. Because the researchers created the event, they know the actual details and can thereby score the witness s recollections for accuracy. Control over the witnessed event allows for the systematic manipulation of various event and testing factors in order to study the conditions that cause accuracy and inaccuracy in eyewitnesses' reports.