Eye witness testimony- cognitive contemporary debate

Question 1

Pozzula and Lindsay (1998)

Answer 1

• Age of the witness
• generated a meta analysis from the results of a number of studies
• children under the age of 5 wee less likely to make correct identifications when the target wasn’t actually present
• children between the age of 5 and 13 made similar accusations to adults although they were more likely to make a choice even if the target wasn’t actually there
• children are more sensitive and often feel as if they are unable to say no

Question 2

Davies et al.

Answer 2

• Age of the witness
• literature review
• level of reliability depends on the age of the child
• children between 6-7 and 10-11 were fairly accurate and they don’t purposefully make things up and lie
• The details of their memory is not significantly altered by adults after the event

Question 3

Loftus and Ketchum

Answer 3

• Emotion
• George Franklin
• His daughter accused him fro murdering her best friend at the age of 8
• no evidence yet he still did 5 years in prison
• daughter has repressed memory from loosing her best friend and the trauma she faced

Question 4

Brown and kilik 1977

Answer 4

• emotion
• flashbulb memories
• vivid, long lasting memories which occur at times of heightened emotion
• last a lifetime, highly detailed

Question 5

Yarmey

Answer 5

• asked a group of students to look at videos of 30 unknown men and classify them as either good or bad guys
• high level of agreement among participants
• reconstructed memory

Question 6

Yuille and cutshall (1986)

Answer 6

• reconstructed memory
• the accuracy is much higher in real life crimes
• if the memory was reconstructed, we would expect eyewitness recollections to have faded overtime and be sustainable to leading questions
• In this study, this was not the case

Question 7

Key figures for age of witness

Answer 7

• Pozzular and Lindsay (1989)
• Davies et al.

Question 8

Key figures for emotion

Answer 8

• loftus and ketchum
• brown and killik 1977

Question 9

Key figures for post-event information

Answer 9

• loftus and palmer 1974
• loftus 1979

Question 10

Key figures for reconstructed memory

Answer 10

• yarmey
• yuille and cutshall 1986

Question 11

What are the 4 key topics in this esay?

Answer 11

• emotion
• age of the witness
• reconstructed memory
• post-event information

Question 12

Why is this an important study?

Answer 12

• eye witness testimony is largely taken into account by juries when securing convictions in court cases