Key Question

Question 1

What is the key question for cognitive psychology?

Answer 1

Is eye witness testimony reliable?

Question 2

Are eyewitnesses seen as credible to juries?

Answer 2

Yes, they may rely on eye witness testimony more than forensic evidence.

Question 3

In the 1990s, how many convictions were overturned?

Answer 3

239 convictions

73% of these convictions were due to eye witness testimony

Question 4

How much does a prisoner cost per year?

Answer 4

£40,000

Question 5

What can affect eye witness testimony’s reliability?

Answer 5

Past experiences
Schemas

Leading questions

Question 6

2 strengths of using eye witness testimony

Answer 6

Yuille and Cutshall - carried out a study on witnesses to a real shooting including asking leading questions about the colour of a panel on a car. They found that leading questions did not affect the accuracy of the ppts recall. However, this was carried out 5 months after incident.

Macleod - studied 379 reports of eye witnesses to assaults and found that there was no difference in the accuracy of the reports between those who were physically hurt in the incident and those who weren’t physically hurt.

Question 7

2 weaknesses of eye witness testimony

Answer 7

The presence of weapons is thought to affect the accuracy of witnesses’ recall. Witnesses tend to focus on the weapon and have less attention and processing to spend on other factors such as the perpetrators face.

Pickel - found that it was not the presence of a weapon but the unusualness of the weapon that affected witnesses’ recall. Ppts that saw a video of a man with a gun at a baseball match gave less accurate recall compared to those that saw a man at a shooting range with a gun.