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Cognitive Key Q - Coggle Diagram
Cognitive Key Q
Studies/Cases for support
Innocence Project (2015)
72% of wrongful convictions were partly or wholly due to eye-witness misidentification
Problems with EWT
In a standard line-up the administrator typically knows who the suspect is - research shows that administrator often provide unintentional cues to the witness about which person to pick from the line-up.
How to Improve
We can use the 'Double-Blind' procedure - neither the administrator nor the eye-witness knows who the perpetrator is. This prevents the administrator from providing inadvertent or intentional verbal or non-verbal cues to influence the eye-witness to pick the suspect
Ronald Cotton
Cotton = wrongfully accused for rape by Jennifer Thompson
Jennifer analysed the rapist's face trying to remember it so she could provide an account in court
She chose the Cotton's photo from a photo line-up and did the same in a regular line-up and was confident in her decision.
Cotton served 10 years during which he recognised a man similar to the case he was convicted guilty for
DNA testing from a sperm sample from the crime-scene 10 yrs prior found that Cotton was innocent, and that Bobby Pool was guilty
This proved that EWT are too unreliable to trust.
Cutler + Penrod point out that 'EWT can be 100% confident and can still be 100% wrong'
The Devlin Committee
(1976)
Analysed over 2000 ID parades in England + Wales
45% of which led to a suspect being picked out - 82% of them were convicted
In 350 of the cases, EWT was the ONLY evidence and 74% of those were convicted
Wells et al. (1998)
DNA evidence subsequently showed that the conviction was wrong
Generally believed that EWT = leading cause of false convictions
Identify the Key Question
Is an Eye-Witness Testimony (EWT) too unreliable to trust?
Define 'eye-witness'
someone who has observed an event and can give a first-hand account to the police or in court where it can be used as evidence
Describe the Issue
Innocent people are going to prison
If the problem is unresolved, it may lead to crimes going unreported, in fear of this continuing
Therefore, people lose their trust in the justice system
Explaining Theories/Models of Memory and Applying it to EWT
MSM
States that info we pay attention to goes to STM and info we rehearse goes to LTM
An eye-witness may be INATTENTIVE e.g. they're distracted - info does not go to STM and therefore can't be rehearsed
Lack of rehearsal = no long term memories formed
Event may have been traumatic so individual may not want to rehearse event - no LTMs.
They might 'CHUNK' info e.g. small details (size/shape of nose/eye colour) - blots out bigger picture, leading to misidentification
Tulving's Episodic/Semantic
States that LTM has episodic and semantic stores
Episodic = events, specific to time and place of encoding
Episodic memories may be forgotten due to retrieval cue failure; no cues available = can't recall event accurately = unreliable account
Forgetting may also occur due to memories getting muddled up with other similar episodic memories E.g. eye-witness confuses one robbery for another - leading to misidentification of one robber for the other
Reconstructive Memory
States that memory is a reconstruction of previous knowledge and schemas (mental units of knowledge that correspond frequently encountered objects, ppl and situations). This allows us to make sense of new info based off of the old
This forms stereotypes
An eye-witness may confabulate (fill in gaps of knowledge with distorted info) when recalling the event
E.g. eye-witness may recall a robber wearing a ski-mask when, in fact, they weren't but their schema has associated robbers with ski-masks
Therefore, making EWT unreliable as people reconstruct their memories.
Evaluating the Key Q