cognitive debate - reliability of eye witness testimony

Question 1

3 points?

Answer 1

1. child witnesses are not reliable
2. memory is reconstructive
3. crimes are emotive experiences

Question 2

point 1?

Answer 2

1 = child witness not reliable - children often regarded as unreliable because they’re prone to fantasy and their memories may be affected by suggestions made by others
- when identifying a perpetrator in a line up a meta analysis by pozzulo and Lindsey

Question 3

point 2 ?

Answer 3

schemas are used to help us process information quickly however the info already in our schemas may distort our memory of an event (for example, our criminal schema may give us an expectation of what a criminal would look like) these expectations may have derived from news reports, TV and movies, leading to an inaccurate recall.
- Barmy asked 240 students to look at videos of 30 unknown makes and classify them as good or bag guys. there was a high agreement amongst participants and found theres similarity in the info stored in schemas

Question 4

point 3 ?

Answer 4

3 = crimes are emotive experiences
- eyewitnesses may not be reliable because the crimes they witness are unexpected and emotionally traumatising. Fried argues that extremely painful or threatening memories are forced into the unconscious mind. traumatic events may be repressed as the memories are too anxiety provoking to remember these jay be repressed as part of an ego defence mechanism.
- williams examined records of young women who had been treated for sexual abuse as children 17 years later 38% of them had no conscious recall of the abuse making eye witness testimonys extremely unreliable.

Question 5

counter argument 1 ?

Answer 5

1 = child witnesses are reliable
- davies et al reviewed the literature discussing children used at eyewitness and found children between the ages of 6 and 7 and 10 and 11 are fairly accurate in their memories of an event they don’t usually ‘make things up’ and they do not deliberately lie when giving a testimony also their memory is not significantly altered by adult suggestions after the event

Question 5

counter argument 2 ?

Answer 5

2 = memory may be reconstructive but that doesn’t mean it is unreliable
- in many crimes eyewitnesses know the perpetrator of the crime. for example, rapecrisis reposts that 90% of rapists are known to their victims meaning the eyewitnesses ability to identify is likely to be reliable

Question 6

counter argument 3 ?

Answer 6

some psychologists believe that when we experience events which are very emotionally shocking that holds personal significance we create a particularly accurate and long lasting memory, called flashbulb memory.