Key Question

• What is eyewitness testimony?

  The statement given to police by a person that has witnessed a crime
• Example of someone who was wrongfully convicted due to eyewitness testimony?

  A stranger broke into Jennifer Cannino's apartment and raped her.

  During the rape Jennifer studied the rapists'face so she would be able to accurately describe and identify her rapist.

  Jennifer then helped police sketch artists draw a picture of her attacker.

  Later in a photo lineup she selected Ronald Cotton .

  She then picked Cotton from a live lineup and he was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison.

  A decade later DNA testing revealed Cotton wasn't a match to semen samples from Jennifer's rapist but the samples did match the DNA of another convict Bobby Poole
• What percentage of cases is eyewitness tesimony the main form of evidence in

  More than 20%
• What percentage of false convictions are due to an inaccurate eyewitness testimony and according to who?

  The innocent project shows that it is 72%
• Why is false eyewitness testimony a problem

  Unjust accusations on innocent people leads them to be wrongfully convicted of crimes that they didn't commit and therefore have to face the punishments for which tends to be imprisonment which can have an extremely significant impact on them mentally for the rest of their lives especially for those that aren't later proven to be innocent.

  Moreover, it allows those who actually did commit the crime to get away with it which endangers the safety of other people as the criminal could repeat their crimes.
• How is eyewitness testimony unreliable using reconstructive memory?

  Reconstructive memory - When an individual witnesses an event they may not remember all the details to describe the full event, so they might rely on schemas to fill in the gaps. Confabulation and rationalisation are used which means recall is inaccurate. Supported by Bartlett's War of the Ghosts study.

  
  

  Leading questions - This is when a question is worded in a way which participants believe there to be a correct answer e.g. 'Did you see the yellow car' suggests that they should have. Supporting evidence- Loftus who found that participants shown a video of a car crash and asked how fast the car was going when it smashed into another gave much higher recall than if the verb was hit
• How is eyewitness testimony unreliable using the multi store model of memory

  Attention is essential in the encoding of memory into the STM and the attention could be subject to weapon focus in many cultures weapons are very unusual and therefore eyewitnesses will tend to focus more closely on the weapon which leads there to being inattention. This explains how eyewitness testimony is unreliable as key details about the crime wouldn't reach the STM.

  Moreover rehearsal is essential for encoding memories into our LTM store. Therefore, if the eyewitness was too traumatised to think/speak about the crime they witnessed then they wouldn't be rehearsing what they witnessed let alone elaboratively rehearsing (which is what is required for memories to be encoded into the LTM). This is an explanation for why eyewitness testimonies are unreliable as details of the crime wouldn't be stored in the witnesses LTM
• What does the multistore memory model suggest the eyewitness would be doing and what would happen if they were to say what happened at the crime scene multiple times?

  The eyewitness would be elaborately rehearsing the event and therefore what would happen is the event would be encoded into their LTM which has an unlimited duration and can be retrieved from the LTM into the STM at any time.
• Do individual differences make eyewitness testimony more/less reliable and how?

  Less reliable as gender and mental health can effect memory which means 2 people of different genders that witnessed the same crime may recall it differently.
• Supporting evidence of eyewitness testimony being reliable?

  Real life eyewitness accounts suggest EWT is accurate - Yuille and Cutshall found witnesses were able to give accurate accounts of a crime 4-5 months after witnessing the original event which goes against lab based research.
• How could we improve the reliability of eyewitness testimony?

  Take the witness back to the crime scene as Tulving and Baddley suggested that cues aid recall
• What should you do at the start of the key question question?

  State the key question, as people have different ones.
• What is the cognitive psychology key question?

  'Is eyewitness testimony appropriate to use as evidence in court?
• Describe (AO1) why eyewitness testimony is not reliable:

  If the witnesses are not accurate in their recall then the wrong person could be convicted, causing a miscarriage of justice and the real offender is left to commit more crime. However, juries still tend to rely on eyewitness testimony when coming to a verdict, especially if the forensic evidence is hard to follow.
• Give an example (AO1) of a wrongful conviction due to eyewitness testimony:

  Ron Cotton is an example of a wrongful conviction, he served 10 years in prison and was eventually exonerated due to DNA but was originally sentenced to life + 50 years.
• Describe (AO1) the consequences of wrongful conviction:

  In 2011, 1/3 of wrongfully convicted people ended up homeless due to a lack of support after their release - more likely to commit another crime.
• Using your knowledge of working memory model (AO2) explain the factors affecting EWT:

  WMM suggests that both sound and visual information can be processed at the same time so an eyewitness's memory of an event should be accurate as the VSSP and the PL can process different information at the same time so should be reliable enough to be used in a courtroom.
• Using your knowledge of reconstructive memory (AO2) explain the factors affecting EWT:

  Reconstructive memory says that when we witness an event it will often be changed to match information the person already knows as this helps the person to make more sense of what they are seeing suggesting that EWT is not reliable enough to use on court as it is open to change (confabulation/rationalisation).
• Using your knowledge of context dependent memory (AO2) explain the factors affecting EWT:

  Episodic memories are context dependent so a witness' memory would likely be more accurate if they were taken back to the crime scene as they would have context cues and their testimony would be more accurate.
• Using your knowledge of the multi-store model (AO2) explain the factors affecting EWT:

  MSM would argue that information from a witness would need to be elaborately rehearsed to move to LTM - if an eye witness has not rehearsed this key information (e.g. the criminal's appearance/weapon) then this information would not be accurate and should not be used in court.
• Evaluate (AO3) eyewitness testimony using Godden et al's study:

  Godden et al showed that when divers learnt and recalled words in the same setting (underwater or on land) their recall was higher than when they learnt and recalled in different environments. This shows that EWT may be less appropriate if witnesses recall the crime in a police station without the cues from the crime scene itself but would be appropriate if they were taken back to the scene of the crime.
• Evaluate (AO3) eyewitness testimony using Bartlett's study:

  -Bartlett found that participants reconstructed memories of the war of the ghost story so that the events of the story matched pre-existing schemas making them easier to understand - EWT should not be used in court as it may not be a consistent memory of what happened in the crime.

  -However, a limitation of Bartlett's research is low ecological validity as the story was a fictional one about tribes and ghosts and not a witness's real life account of an event that happened to them. This means it is limited in what it tells us about how a real witness's memory works so it may not be reliable to use in court.
• Evaluate (AO3) eyewitness testimony using working memory:

  Does not consider individual differences - some eyewitnesses can take 2 pieces of sound information in from the crime scene without their phonological loops becoming overloaded - therefore, the working memory model lacks validity - it is not accurate to claim that all eyewitness testimony shouldn't be used in a courtroom.
• Give a conclusion to using eyewitness testimony as evidence in court:

  Overall, it is useful to look at how appropriate EWT is in court because it means that the right suspect will be prosecuted and justice will be given for families - however, without collaborating with other evidence such as DNA, EWT isn't very reliable by itself.
• What is the Key Question this study material focuses on?

  How can psychology help treat people suffering from dementia?
• The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's
• How many people in the UK are affected by dementia?

  850,000
• Dementia primarily affects individuals under the age of65.

  False
• What are the common symptoms of dementia?

  Loss of memory, cognitive deficits, depression
• Dementia is ultimately a terminal illness.
• What is the estimated impact of delaying the onset of dementia by five years?

  Halve the number of deaths
• Dementia symptoms are always immediately noticeable.

  False
• Who developed a test to diagnose dementia early?

  1. Bruno
• 1. Bruno's test uses a word recall task.
• Healthy memory loss from old age is the same as pathological memory loss detected by Prof. Bruno's test.

  False
• What type of memory loss does Prof. Bruno's test detect?

  Pathological
• Steps involved in Prof. Bruno's dementia diagnosis test:

  1️⃣ Present a list of 15 words

  2️⃣ Ask patients to recall the words

  3️⃣ Analyze recall patterns

  4️⃣ Distinguish between healthy and pathological memory loss
• For which stages of dementia does Cognitive Stimulation work best?

  Mild to moderate
• Cognitive Stimulation reduces stress and loneliness.
• Cognitive Stimulation always involves music or pets.

  False