Cognitive Key Question

Question 1

Identify the key issue you have studied (1 mark)

Answer 1

How reliable is eyewitness testimony?

Question 2

Outline and describe the key issue. (3 marks)

Answer 2

• EWT is evidence supplied by people who witness specific events of crime, relying on only their memory to recall the event.
• Plays an important role in court cases as if an eyewitness can confidently identify a suspect and confirm they saw them commit the crime, they can persuade the jury to believe them
• EWT is very useful and important as it’s a first person account of the crime, and is good if no DNA evidence can be provided

Question 3

How can this key issue impact society?

Answer 3

• due to EWT non being completely reliable and accurate, it could lead to innocent people being falsely sent to jail consistently. = this could lead to society losing trust in the criminal justice system meaning crimes go unreported through fear of miss identifying victims.
• An example of this happening is Jennifer Thompson wrongly identifying Ronald Cotton as her raper, resulting in him spending 11 years in jail before he was found not guilty.

Question 4

What is the innocence project?

Answer 4

In 2015, the Eyewitness Project identified that 72% of wrongful convictions were due to eyewitness misidentification, demonstrating how this is a key issue in society.

Question 5

Explain one of the possible explanations of memory which could cause an EWT to be unreliable.

Answer 5

• Bartletts theory of reconstructive memory can explain an unreliable EWT as he says that people do not passively record memories as exact copies of new information, but actively try to make sense of it in terms of what they already know
• Eye witnesses may change their account of the memory through changing the order of the events (rationalisation) changing the details to more familiar terms (transformation) missing out information seen as not important (simplification) or completely adding in new information (confabulation). All of these factors may occur as a result of our schemas trying to fill in the gaps in knowledge to try make sense of the situation
• If any of these factors have affected the eye witnesses’ recall of the event, then it is possible that there are severe inaccuracies potentially leading to a misidentification of the criminal.

Question 6

Explain another one of the possible explanations of memory which could cause an EWT to be unreliable.

Answer 6

• The Multi store model demonstartes the importance of rehearsal in order to retain information in STM or transfer it to LTM.
• The 2 rehearsal processes are maintenance (repeating information) and elaborative (adding meaning to the information)
• Therefore if the eyewitness doesn’t carry out one of the rehearsal processes due to potential emotions, distractions or refusal too if event was too severe, the recall of event is likely to be poor/ distorted, or it may have been completely forgotten

Question 7

Explain a third possible explanationof memory which could cause an EWT to be unreliable.

Answer 7

• Tulvings belief of semantic and episodic memory could explain how episodic memories are forgotten.
• Episodic memories are autobiographical and those personal to you. They can be temporarily dated and are usually stored with some information on where/ when/ how it was learned.
• Episodic memories can be forgotten however due to retrieval cue failure, and can also be distorted in content as they are linked to previous memories
• EWT therefore could be unreliable if the eyewitness doesn’t remember the retrieval cue or have changed the context of the memory

Question 8

Give one way that reliability of EWT can be improved.

Answer 8

• Cognitive interviews are now a standardised questioning technique used by the police to enhance retrieval of information about a crime scene from the eye witnesses’ memory.
• principals such as changing the order of recall, changing perspective, reporting everything and mental reinstatement are all used in a cognitive interview to act as cues for triggering memories or details, giving a more accurate EWT with a higher reliability.

Question 9

Give a second way of improving the reliability of EWT.

Answer 9

-Training police officers to carry out an eyewitness review properly means less innocent people are being sent to jail by mistake, and also society is likely to trust police officers more if the chance of misidentification is reduced.