Witnessing a Crime

Question 1

Encoding, storage and what else are considered the 3 main components of memory?

Answer 1

Retrieval

Question 2

Before any sort of information is encoded in the memory, what must occur first?

Answer 2

Perception

Question 3

The phenomenon that occurs when we see faces in inanimate objects is called:

Answer 3

Pareidolia

Question 4

Confirming strategies seek to strengthen and support a theory, whereas disconfirming strategies seek to challenge them. Which strategy are police most likely to use when investigating a crime?

Answer 4

Confirming strategies

Question 5

Our perception of stimuli depends on prior experiences, knowledge and beliefs. Because of this, eyewitnesses are most likely to utilise which cognitive technique when interpreting a crime?

Answer 5

Top-down processing

Question 6

Our beliefs and expectations around how to behave are called:

Answer 6

Schemas

Question 7

Police are likely to interpret people gathering on the street as a drug deal. This is an example of which cognitive process?

Answer 7

Top-down processing

Question 8

A study from Payne (2001) found that participants who were primed with black faces were slower to categorise an ambiguous object as a weapon. True or false?

Answer 8

False

(Participants were quicker to categorise the object as a weapon, which demonstrates a bias against black people and other people of colour within the justice system.)

Question 9

A lack of recall ability does not necessarily demonstrate a problem with retrieval - this is more likely to be an issue of which other memory system?

Answer 9

Encoding

Question 10

Attention, salience, stress, arousal and the presence of a weapon are all factors that influence which stage of memory?

Answer 10

Encoding

Question 11

Name the phenomenon that occurs when we miss obvious visual changes:

Answer 11

Change blindness

Question 12

According to Lieppe & colleagues (1978) witnesses to a theft are more likely to identify the perpetrator if the value of an item is high. True or false?

Answer 12

True

(Additionally, if the specific value of an item is known, the strength of encoding increases (Lieppe et al., 1978.))

Question 13

Lieppe et al.’s (1978) study demonstrated which factor influencing encoding?

Answer 13

Salience

Question 14

Findings from Wessel & Merkelback (1997) showed that memory for central events did not differ between arachnophobes and non-arachnophobes, but also that arachnophobes scored lower for ____ details:

Answer 14

Peripheral

Question 15

Easterbrook (1959) theorised that people can only attend to limited numbers of cues at a time. This is known as the:

Answer 15

Cue utilisation theory

Question 16

In Morgan et al.’s (2004) study, stress was found to be a particularly influential factor in mistaken identifications. True or false?

Answer 16

True

(About 51-68% of mistaken identifications were made in high stress conditions, compared to 12-38% of those in the low stress condition (Morgan et al. (2004))

Question 17

The effect in which visual attention is given to the weapon a perpetrator is using is called:

Answer 17

Weapon focus

Question 18

Research has shown that we are less likely to be drawn to a weapon if the situation is harmless. True or false?

Answer 18

False

((as demonstrated by Loftus & colleagues (1987), even in harmless situations, witnesses’ eyes are automatically drawn to a weapon if present. This shows that weapon focus is not primarily due to arousal.))