key question Flashcards
What is the key question for cognitive?
Why is eye witness testimony not reliable?
4 points of how to answer.
-define key terms in key question
-give example of the issue presented
-why is it an issue in general?
-why is it an issue for society?
what is eye witness testimony?
Recalled memory of a witness to a crime or incident.
what happened to Ronald Cotton?
he got sentenced 10 years in prison for a rape case in which he didn’t do before police found DNA evidence which identified the real person.
Why is Ronald Cottons case an issue?
If the testimony is fallible then the real perpetration is free to commit more crimes
What is the Delvin report (1976)?
They have to have more than one EWT in order for the accusation to me more accurate.
how can reconstructive memory apply to the key question?
-Suggests that memories are inaccurate and we cannot remember everything as it happens
-we use schemas to recall memories of an event and this influences the accuracy of our memories as everybody’s recall can be different.
what is an example of how memories can be distorted?
(reconstructive memory-key question)
War of the ghosts:
-words were changed as they were unfamiliar with certain native words
-this could lead to wrongly accusing people in real like terms.
how can the working memory model apply to the key question?
-processing is slowed down if we try to process 2 things within the same memory component
-2 auditory/word based tasks slows phonological loop.
this could mix up 2 conversations ocurring at the same time
-leads to inaccurate EWT.
How can the multi-store model apply to the key question?
-Attention needs to occur to transfer info from the sensory store to STM, this can call differences in recall as:
-if we don’t pay attention to info it wont go to STM
-Everybody can be paying attention to different things.
(this causes everybody’s statement to be different.)
The capacity of STM is 7+-2 so a lot of what we witness can decay due to the amount you can hold.
How does Loftus and Palmer apply to the key question?
-they put 45 participants into 5 groups and they were shown 7 film clips of traffic accidents then were asked questions after.
-each groups were given a different verb.
(smash, hit, bumped, collided, contacted)
-they found out that each very used in the question altered the participants memory of the film.
-smashed was estimated 41 mph -fastest
-contacted was estimated 32 mph- slowest
