Pozzulo (psychology being investigated)

Question 1

Define line ups

Answer 1

• A form of evidence used by the legal system.
• In which a witness is shown a line of people/ photoarray of faces and is asked to identify the perpretrator.

Question 2

Define eye witnesses testimony

Answer 2

• Legal evidence submitted by someone who has witnessed a crime take place.
• critical area in forensic psychology, particularly regarding the reliability and accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Question 3

Define false postive response

Answer 3

Giving an affirmative but incorrect answer to a question.

Question 4

Define false memeories

Answer 4

• A stored piece of information that an indiviudal belives to be an accurate memory but is actually a product of later, additional, untrue information.

Question 5

How can memory become distorted?

Answer 5

• By information we are exposed to during and after encoding.

Problematic for eye witness testimonies (as human memeory is used as evidence)

Question 6

Encoding

Answer 6

The process in which we initially recieve information

Question 7

Storage

Answer 7

Maintaining this information overtime

Question 8

Retrieval

Answer 8

Accessing the information when we need it.

Question 9

Social factors

Answer 9

• Involves influences of social context and social pressures on decision-making.
• In a line up a child may feel compelled to make a choice even when uncertain. Due to perceived expectations from authority figures (or a desire to be helpful)
• And faced with a cognitively diffciult task the child will reply more on social factors (thus will make more mistakes)

police officers- authority figures

Question 10

Cognitive demand

Answer 10

• Refer to mental processes involved in memory and recognition
• For instance, during a eyewitness identification, these cognitive factors include person’s ability to accurately recall and recognize faces or details from a memory.

Question 11

Summarise the background simply

Answer 11

Pozzullo et al based the study on their previous research of child witnesses and they found:
* There are cognitive factors that cause errors in a child’s decision making process.
* There are social factors that cause errors in a childs decision making process.
* Children are more likley to identify an innocent person in an target-absent lines ups. (false postive responses)

When the culprit was not present in the line ups.

Question 12

What are some cognitive factors that can influence a child’s decision making process? (during a line up)

Answer 12

• Post-event information (like the way a question is asked to the child)
• So any information they are exposed during or after encoding.

Question 13

What are some social factors that can influence a child’s decision making?

Answer 13

Children are less likely than adults to say “ I dont know” :
* Children feel they must make a response. Saying a culprit is not there, is seen as a non-response.
* More likely to comply with authority figures
* Fear of getting into trouble