Section A: Cognitive psychology

2a) Identify two factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and explain how each affect eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is a key part of any investigation. However it has been proved by psychologists that eyewitness testimony isnt always accurate. In 1982 Loftus and Burns conducted a study of the effect that stress and anxiety have on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony where participants were shown a clip of a violent shooting of a young boy. The participants in the study had a largely impaired recall of events. This supported the hypotheses by Deffertbacher et al (2004), which stated that high levels of stress have a negative impact on the recall of events. However this is contradicted by a study by Christianson and Hubinette (1993) when they found that 58 witnesses of a real life bank robbery, witnesses who had been threatened in some way had a better recall than those witnesses who had just been watching the events. This study shows that some emotional arousal stimulates a higher awareness of the events that unfolded. Deffertbacher et al. concluded that the Yerkes-Dodson law could explain this. The Yerkes-Dodson law suggests that arousal only improves recall up until a certain point and then when arousal reaches too high a level, the accuracy of recall is lessened. Another factor affecting the accuracy of an eyewitness testimony is the age of the witness. Children chose someone more frequently than college students but were also less likely to make a positive identification. In a study conducted by Yarmey (1993) adults were stopped and asked to recall features of a woman that they had spoken to for a brief period of time only a few minutes earlier. Younger adults were more confident in their recall but other than that there was no significant difference between the age of adults and the accuracy of their recall. Another influence that age has on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony is the own-age bias. When someone of a certain age is asked to identify someone of their own age group they were more likely to make a positive identification than when they had to identify someone of a different age group. This was proved in a study by Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) where individuals from 3 age

groups were asked to look at 24 images of people from 3 different age groups and rate them on attractiveness. After a filler activity they were then shown 48 images including the 24 that they were shown earlier and asked to recall what images were the 24 that they had seen earlier. People were better at recalling the people from their own age group. 3a) i) Identify one strategy that will improve recall of information for examination. One strategy that will improve the accuracy of recall is the cognitive interview, which was developed by Fisher and Geiselman (1982). A cognitive interview can be categorized into 4 main components: report everything, mental reinstatement of the context, changing the order and changing the perspective. It was developed in reference to psychological literature, and based on the fact that people remember events more clearly when they are provided with retrieval cues. ii) Explain why this strategy should improve recall. The cognitive interview should help improve recall as it works by providing a level of consistency between the original incident and the recreated situation. Therefore they are more likely to recall more details of the incident. In a study by Geiselman et al. (1985) when participants were shown a video of a simulated crime and then interviewed using standard police interview or the cognitive interview it was found that the cognitive interview gave more correct answers than the standard police interview. However there are a few problems with the cognitive interview process as in a study by Koelinken et al. (1999) is was also found that under cognitive interview more incorrect information was also recalled than under standard interview conditions. Another issue with the cognitive interview is the time that it takes to conduct a cognitive interview doesnt always fit with the time constraints needed by police officers when interviewing people. 4) Trevor is a police officer. He is concerned that eyewitness statements he has taken have often proven to be incomplete and some contained false elements. When he interviews witnesses he generally asks lots of short, closed questions and tends to interrupt if witnesses dont recall what he wants to know immediately. He claims his habit of asking questions in no particular order ensures he keeps witnesses on their toes and stops them elaborating on what really happened. Identify the problems with Trevors current method of interviewing witnesses and suggest changes he could make

to improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Trevors current method of interviewing witnesses is ineffective. What he is currently doing goes totally against what the cognitive interview technique has proven to be a successful method of enhancing the accuracy of witness recall. By asking short closed questions if prevents witnesses from reporting everything. This is one of the four critical parts of the cognitive interview method. By preventing them from reporting everything witnesses are limiting the information that they remember. The use of closed questions means that they are only required to answer with short answer and means that they are not provided with retrieval cues. The way that Trevor refrains from asking general could also be biasing the interview as the questions that he asks may be leading instead of probing the witness to explain exactly what happened. It has been proven by Loftus (1992) that leading questions can alter what a witness remembers about an event. Another problem with the way in which Trevor interviews witnesses is that he interrupts them whey are talking meaning that they are put under lots of stress. It was proven by Deffertbacher et al. that a small amount of stress can help improve memory but once that level of stress reaches a higher level then the accuracy of the witness testimony is seriously impaired. Interrupting them can also make them feel like they have to give an answer regardless of its validity. The way that Trevor asks questions in no particular order can confuse witness, they have no order to the questions that they are being asked therefore aspects of their memory can be left out when they are switching between points of the timeline. The cognitive interview technique says changing the order of the timeline but there has still got to be some link to it, such as reversing the timeline and working back through it. To improve the technique that Trevor uses to interview witnesses, he should allow the witness to elaborate on what they are explaining and report everything regardless of how irrelevant it may appear to be. He should also use well phrased open questions, that encourage the witness to explain clearly what happened and prevent them being led to believe a certain thing happened when it didnt. His interviews should have a clear structure and the questions that he asks should have an order to them and prevent the eyewitness testimony provided from being inaccurate. 5) Outline and evaluate the working memory model of memory. The central executive is the part of the working memory model with the overall control. It only has a limited capacity but can process different forms of information. It has a range of different responsibilities such as correcting errors, setting goals, alternating attention between tasks, retrieving information from long-term memory and starting the rehearsal process.

The phonological loop has a limited capacity. It uses a sound based code to store information, but the information begins to decay after two seconds. The phonological loop gets its information from either your ears or from your long-term memory e.g. when you are remembering your favourite piece of music. Baddeley (1986) then developed the phonological loop even more into the phonological store and articulatory process. The phonological store holds the words you hear and the articulatory process is for words that you hear or see. These words are then repeated to rehearse them. The visuo-spatial sketchpad stores and manipulates visual information. Visual and spatial information is temporarily stored in the visuo-spatial sketchpad. It is used to plan spatial tasks such as moving around your house. Logie (1995) then went onto say that it can be divided into a visual store and inner scribe. In 2000 Baddeley then went onto add the episodic buffer to the multi store model. He realised that model needed a general store as the central executive cannot hold information and information in both the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop had a very short duration. The episodic buffer is used to integrate information from the central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad and the long-term memory. Baddeley and Hitch (1976) provided evidence that supported the working memory model, by asking participants to do two tasks simultaneously. One task used the central executive, and the other task involves the articulatory loop or both the articulatory loop and the central executive. Task 1 is slower when Task 2 also uses the central executive. This is evidence of the working memory model. There is also evidence of the individual components of the working memory model. There is evidence of the epidsodic buffer as proved by Baddeley (1987) when participants were asked for immediate recall on words, the recall was better when words were related than when there was no relation between words. The working memory model seems like a plausible explanation to how memory works. It fits with the way we manipulate information in every day tasks. It also shows what part of the brain is damaged when people have brain damage, such as the cases of KF and SC. There have been numerous amounts of research done to support the working memory model. The working memory model is continually being adapted to support new developments that arise. The development of subcomponents to each component has been made to fit new developments.