COGNITIVE - KEY QUESTION

Question 1

AO1

Answer 1

what is your key question?
->is EWT too unreliable to trust?

what is EWT?
->EWT is an account given by people of an event that they have witnessed

why is EWT important in a court case?
->in some cases EWT is the only evidence that they have if there is no DNA evidence
->it’s a first hand account of what the perpetrator looked like and the order of events

why does society need to question it’s reliability?
->EWT isn’t always reliable as the wrong person could be convicted (eg. Ronald Cotton was wrongfully convicted of the rape of Jennifer Thompson from an EWT and spent over 10 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, which could’ve been avoided with more reliable EWT procedures)
->if the wrong person is convicted, the real criminal is still out in society, which is dangerous, and people may lose faith in the police’s abilities

why is this an issue?
->we can no longer convict people based on an EWT alone
->the Devlin Committee 1976 analysed over 2000 ID parades in England and Wales, 45% led to a picked suspect, and 82% were convicted
->the Innocence Project 2015, found that 72% of wrongful convictions were a result of inaccurate EWT

Question 2

AO2:

Answer 2

RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY:
-> Bartlett’s reconstructive memory theory (1932) suggests that our memory changes and manipulates information in order for it to make sense to us
->schemas are little parcels of information from past experiences; it is highly possible that the EW had forgotten parts of the story and filled the gaps in with schemas - for example, they may fill in the gaps with scenes from an action movie they recently watched
->rationalisation is where we alter the order of events to make it easier to understand, if this happens during EWT, the EW won’t have the correct order of events, increasing the chance of wrongful conviction
–>therefore, making EWT an unreliable method of conviction

MSM:
->the MSM (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1986) suggests that we need elaborative rehearsal in order for knowledge to be transferred from STM to LTM
–>in a high intensity situation, like a robbery or attack, it is highly unlikely that your brain will be focused on the elaborative rehearsal of events
–>this will likely lead to the EW forgetting important details and potentially convicting the wrong person as a result.
–>therefore, making EWT too unreliable to trust

Question 3

AO3:

Answer 3

RESEARCH TO SUPPORT:
->Loftus & Palmer
–>ppts were EWs of a car crash video and were asked to leading questions to see how it would impact their recall of events
–>eg. if the car crash was described with more aggressive adjectives like “smashed” the ppts speed estimate was around 41mph, whereas a softer adjective like “hit” would cause lower speed estimated of around 34mph
–>this demonstrates how leading questions can affect a ppt’s recall of an event
–>if leading Qs are asked by a police officer, intentionally or unintentionally, the EW could be influenced into picking the wrong person, therefore making EWT unreliable

RESEARCH AGAINST:
->Yuille & Cutshall
–>they conducted interviews with real EWs of a shooting in Vancouver
–>they asked ppts leading Qs to see if it would influence their answers
–>however, despite the high stress environment, leading Qs, and 6 month time gap between the event and the recall, EWs recounts of the event remained highly accurate
–>therefore, providing that evidence that EWT is reliable