Chapter 5: Eyewitness Testimony

Question 1

What is Recall Memory?

Answer 1

Reporting details of a previously witnessed event or person

Question 2

What is Recognition Memory?

Answer 2

Determining whether a previously seen item or person is the same as what is currently being viewed

Question 3

What is an Estimator Variable?

Answer 3

Variables that present at the time of the crime and cannot be changed (Independent Variable

e.g. Age, Amount of lighting, presence of a weapon

Question 4

What are System Variables?

Answer 4

Variables that can be manipulated to increase (or decrease) eyewitness accuracy (Dependent Variable)

e.g. Type of lineup procedure used to present the suspect to the witness

Question 5

What is an Open-Ended Recall/Free Narrative?

Answer 5

Witnesses are asked to either write or orally state all they remember about the event without the officer (or experimenter) asking questions (Dependent Variable)

Question 6

What is Direct Question Recall?

Answer 6

Witnesses are asked a series of specific questions about the crime or the perpetrator (Dependent Variable)

e.g. Asking the length of the perpetrators hair

Question 7

What is a Lineup?

Answer 7

A set of people presented to the witness, who must state whether the perpetrator is present and if so which person is it

Question 8

What is Memory Conformity?

Answer 8

When what one witness reports influences what another witness reports (if both witnesses talk to each other telling them what the say to the interviewer)

Question 9

What is the Misinformation Effect/Post-Event Information?

Answer 9

Phenomenon where a witness who is presented with inaccurate information will incorporate that misinformation into a subsequent recall task

Question 10

What is Misinformation Acceptance Hypothesis?

Answer 10

Explanation for the misinformation effect where the incorrect information is provided because the witness guesses what the officer or experimenter wants the answers to be

Question 11

What is Source Misattribution Hypothesis?

Answer 11

Explanation for the misinformation effect where the witness has 2 memories, the original and the misinformation, however the witness cannot remember where each memory originated or the source of each

Question 12

What is the Memory Impairment Hypothesis?

Answer 12

Explanation for the misinformation effect where the original memory is replaced with the new incorrect information

Question 13

What is Hypnotically Refreshed Memory?

Answer 13

A hypnotized witness may be able to produce a greater number of details than a non hypnotized witness

Question 14

What are the 2 Techniques in Hypnosis

Answer 14

Age Regression and Television Technique

Question 15

What is Age Regression in Hypnosis?

Answer 15

The witness goes back in time and re-experiences the original event

Question 16

What is Television Technique?

Answer 16

The witness imagines that they are watching an imaginary television screen with the events being played as they witnesses

Question 17

What is the Cognitive Interview?

Answer 17

Interview procedure for use with eyewitness based on principles of memory storage and retrieval

Question 18

What is Enhanced Cognitive Interview?

Answer 18

Interview procedure that includes various principles of social dynamics in addition to the memory retrieval principles used in the original cognitive interview

Question 19

What is the Suspect?

Answer 19

A person the police suspect committed the crime, who may be guilty or innocent of the crime in question

Question 20

Who is the Perpetrator?

Answer 20

The guilty person who commited the crime

Question 21

What are Foils/Distractors?

Answer 21

Lineup members who are known to be innocent of the crime in question

Question 22

What is a Fair Lineup?

Answer 22

A lineup where the suspect does not stand out from the other lineup members

Question 23

What is a Target-Present Lineup?

Answer 23

A lineup that contains the perpetrator

Question 24

What is a Target-Absent Lineup?

Answer 24

A lineup that does not contain the perpetrator but rather an innocent suspect

Question 25

What is a Photo Array?

Answer 25

Photographic lineups - Used more often

Question 26

What is a Simultaneous Lineup?

Answer 26

A common lineup procedure that presents all lineup members at one time to the witness

Question 27

What is Relative Judgement?

Answer 27

Witness compares lineup members to one another and the person who looks most like the perpetrator is identified

Question 28

What is Sequential Lineup?

Answer 28

Alternative lineup procedure whether the lineup members are presented serially to the witness, and the witness must make a decision as to whether the lineup member is the perpetrator before seeing another member. Also, a witness cannot ask to see previously seen photos and is unaware of the number of the photos being shown

Question 29

What is Absolute Judgment?

Answer 29

Witnesses compares each lineup member to the memory of the perpetrator to decide whether the lineup member is the perpetrator

Question 30

What is a Showup?

Answer 30

Identification procedure that shows 1 person to the witness: the suspect

Question 31

What is a Walkby?

Answer 31

Identification procedure that occurs in a naturalistic environment. The police take the witness to a public location where the suspect is likely to be. Once the suspect is n view, the witness is asked whether they see the perpetrator

Question 32

What is Biased Lineup?

Answer 32

A lineup that suggests whom the police suspect and thereby whom the witness should identify

Question 33

What are 3 Estimator variables that receives attention in Witnesses?

Answer 33

1. Age 2. Weapon Focus 3. Race

Question 34

What is Cross-Race Effect/Own-Race Bias?

Answer 34

Phenomenon of witnesses remembering own-race faces with greater accuracy than faces from other races

Question 35

What is Weapon Focus?

Answer 35

A term used to describe the phenomenon of a witness attention being focused on the perpetrators weapon rather than the perpetrator 2 explanations for this are arousal and unusualness

Question 36

What is Cue-Utilization Hypothesis?

Answer 36

Proposed by Easterbrook (1959) to explain why a witness may focus on the weapon rather than on the details. The hypothesis suggests that when emotional arousal increases, attentional capacity decreases

Question 37

What are the Stages of Memory?

Answer 37

1. Perceiving/Attention Stage 2. Encoding Stage 3. Short-term Memory 4. Long-term Memory 5. Retrieval Stage

Question 38

What is Change Blindness?

Answer 38

Occurs when a change in a visual stimulus is introduced and the observer does not notice it

Question 39

What are Factors that Affect Encoding?

Answer 39

- Attention - Unexpectedness - Witness involvement - State of the witness

Question 40

What are Factors Affecting Retrieval?

Answer 40

- Inferences (people guess) - Stereotypes (people fill in gaps) - Partisanship (biases influence memory) - Scripts/Schemas (typical vs actual info) - Emotional Factors (anxiety blocks retrieval) - Context Effects (cues trigger memories) - Time

Question 41

What are the 3 ways to Study Eyewitness Testimony/Issues?

Answer 41

1. Recall of event/crime 2. Recall of perpetrator 3. Recognition of perpetrator

Question 43

What are 3 Techniques to Aid Eyewitness Memory?

Answer 43

1. Hypnosis 2. Cognitive Interview 3. Enhanced Cognitive Interview