EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY AND MEMORY

Question 1

What is the definition of an eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

Evidence given under oath in a court of law by an individual who claims to have witnessed the facts under dispute.

Question 2

What % of wrongful convictions are a result of an inaccurate eye witness testimony? (USA)

Answer 2

69%

Question 3

What % of wrongful convictions involve inaccurate eye witness testimony? (UK)

Answer 3

75%

Question 4

What problems do wrongful convictions involve inaccurate eyewitness testimony cause for society?

Answer 4

• Mistrust in the police and legal system
• Expensive for UK tax payers (money could go someone else)
• Real Perpetrator could commit other crimes (unsafe society)

Question 5

What is the key question for the cognitive approach?

Answer 5

Is eye-witness testimony too unreliable to be used in court as evidence?

Question 6

Describe the computer analogy

Answer 6

Information gets inputted (sensory memory) and processed (working memory) then the information gets outputted (a response to the stimuli) afterwards the info could be put into hard drive storage (LTM)

Question 7

How much can it cost per case in compensation for a wrongful conviction?

Answer 7

£1 million

Question 8

How much does it cost a UK tax payer per prisoner annually?

Answer 8

at least £35,000

Question 9

3 case studies impacted by a wrongful conviction?

Answer 9

Ronald Cotton, Steve Titus, William Mills

Question 10

How can these cases affect the wrongfully convicted?

Answer 10

Discrimination, relationship and familial damage, lost time, stress, mental health issues, issues within prison etc

Question 11

Why is this topic socially sensitive research?

Answer 11

Potentially overturning convictions of crimes that have some significant damage to victims

Question 12

Who are Atkinson and Shiffrin?

Answer 12

They created a Multistore model of memory in 1968 which claims memory has 3 distinct stores: Sensory register, short term store, long term store

Question 13

What is encoding?

Answer 13

How information is stored in the brain (formatting information in different ways)

Question 14

What is Capacity?

Answer 14

How many items a memory store can hold

Question 15

What is duration?

Answer 15

How long a memory will last

Question 16

SENSORY REGISTER - encoding, capacity, duration and transfer/forgetting

Answer 16

Encoding = modality specific
Capacity = 3-5 items
Duration = 0.5 seconds
(Attention aids transfer, otherwise info decays)

Question 17

SHORT TERM STORE - encoding, capacity, duration and transfer/forgetting

Answer 17

Encoding = Acoustically
Capacity = 5-9
Duration = 18-30 seconds
(Rehearsal aids transfer, otherwise new info displaces old)

Question 18

LONG TERM STORE - encoding, capacity, duration and transfer/forgetting

Answer 18

Encoding = Semantically
Capacity = potentially unlimited
Duration = potentially indefinite
(Info can decay over time and new info can interfere with old)

Question 19

How does sensory memory work?

Answer 19

Info from environment enters the sensory register through our 5 senses and the encoding is modality specific on each sense

Question 20

How is visual information encoded?

Answer 20

iconic sensory store

Question 21

How is acoustic info encoded?

Answer 21

echoing sensory store

Question 22

Evidence for sensory memory

Answer 22

Sperling (1960) - visual array of letters shown for 0.05 seconds - people on average recalled 4.32 letters

Question 23

How does the STM store work?

Answer 23

Info is only transferred from the sensory register to the STM store if attention is paid to it

Question 24

Evidence for STM store

Answer 24

• Miller (1956) found we can remember 7 items (+/- 2) after noting that things often appear in 7s e.g days of the week
• Peterson and Peterson (1959) recalling trigram after set times
• Braddeley (1966) STM encoded acoustically test, mistakes like coat as boat

Question 25

Ronald Cotton Case study

Answer 25

• Jennifer was a rape victim
• They used an identikit to identify the suspect
• She was shown images of potential suspects and picked out Ronald Cotton as the perpetrator of the crime
• Ronald was convicted and later for a 2nd rape aswell
• In prison Bobby Poole was boasting about another man serving time for a tape he committed
• 10 years later he was exonerated
  ( Bobby Poole committed other rapes prior to being put in prison )

Question 26

Steve Titus Case Study

Answer 26

• Police misidentified his car as the car of a rapist (earlier that night)
• He was taken into the police station when the victim said he “looked most like the man” who had raped her
• In court she told the jury she was certain it was him + he was convicted
• He fought his conviction and eventually was recognised by a journalist who tracked down the real perpetrator
• His conviction was overturned
  (Steve lost his job, fiancé, savings, and eventually his life due to a stress related heart attack