Age -Children may be unlikely to have the confidence to correct mistakes made by adults during interviews where they are giving testimony, Roberts and Lamb (1999) did a analysis of 3-14 year olds in 68 interviews for abuse cases in USA. They listened to interviews and recorded how many changes were made by adults. e.g. if the child said near the school and the adult later said in the school, and how many of those were corrected by the child. Out of 140 changes, only a third were corrected, and only when the changes was not complex. These findings suggest children will not have the confidence to correct adults' mis-readings, and therefore may give inaccurate testimony.
Misleading information and questioning- If a question is misleading then the information that answers the question will also be misleading as they would give the answer for what they were asked not what they saw, e.g. if a robber drove off in a black BMW and the inspector asked what colour was the van, the witness would get confused and due to them mainly focusing on the robber they would not register what the getaway vehicle was. This would then lead them to thinking that it was a van instead of a black BMW and give false information. The study actually consists of two laboratory experiments.
Anxiety- When you are anxious in a situation you will be able to give more detail and accurate recall, this means that you will be able to remember smaller detail like the getaway vehicle and what the robber looked