Given the information that we now know about eyewitness testimony verses DNA science on page 440‚ this makes you stop and wonder about how many people have been wrongly imprisoned or put to death before DNA testing came along. From reading the article o page 440‚ it looks like the psychologists are using research to identify by showing individual pictures opposed to a police lineup; a person is most likely to choose an individual that may look close to the person that committed the crime. I think
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Eyewitness Testimony as a source of reliable evidence In relation to cognitive psychology‚ is eyewitness testimony reliable in today’s judicial system? Word Count: 3944 ABSTRACT Is eyewitness testimony a reliable source of evidence in today’s judicial system? Many jurors tend to pay close attention to eyewitness testimony assuming that what they hear is exactly as it happened. They ignore the psychology behind remembering an event. Our brain is a complex structure and it is difficult to absorb
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level of analysis child eyewitness testimonies can be reliable and credible because children are less suggestible to the formation of false memories according to the Fuzzy Trace Theory. Suggestibility is the degree to which encoding‚ storage and retrieval of information when reporting events is manipulated by internal or external factors (Bruck & Ceci‚ 1997). False memories are a recollection of an event that has not actually occurred. On the other hand child eyewitness testimonies can be unreliable and
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Ronald Cotton - Eyewitness Testimony Jennifer Thomas‚ a 22-year old college student from Burlington‚ North Carolina‚ was raped in her off-campus apartment on July 28‚ 1984. During the assault‚ Jennifer studied her rapist’s face and other characteristics in the case that she made it out alive. Thomas was able to escape and ran to a police station and with the help of a detective‚ she was able to make a composite sketch of the perpetrator. The rapist also managed to rape another woman a few blocks
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Eyewitness testimonies are considered unreliable and were neglected for helping gather evidence in Steven Truscotts case. There are two witnesses that provided evidence that indicates that a car could have been present where Lynn Harper was rapped. George Edens found Lynn Haper’s body and said you could see car skid marks. Bob Lawson said he saw a car parked near spot but he had never seen a car there before. This all corresponds with Steven Truscotts statement that he left Lynn Harper near highway
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Running head: Eyewitness Testimony 1 The Effect of Cross-Examination on Eyewitness Testimony Abstracts Cross-examination increases the likelihood of eyewitness error. Preceding research indicates that while being cross-examined children alter a lot of their originally correct responses. An experiment conducted by Maras & Valentine (2011) describes in which the result of cross-examination on accurateness of adult eyewitness testimony was explored
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justice system‚ eyewitness testimony is one of the most commonly used pieces of evidence by a jury. It plays a crucial role in criminal court casesas it is relied on heavily for investigating and prosecuting crimes. Eyewitness testimony refers to an account given by a person of an event they have witnessed (McLeod‚ 2009).Whether a person is convicted of a crime or not can ultimately depend on how reliable a person’s recollection of a crime is. When correct‚ eye witness testimony can be helpful in
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Outline and evaluate the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony AO1 AO2 Yerkes Dodson law – states that there is an optimum level of anxiety for accurate eyewitness testimony. I.e. People who are not at all stressed‚ and people who are very stressed will be less accurate eyewitnesses that those who are under a moderate amount of stress. Loftus carried out a study of the ‘Weapon effect’. She set up two conditions of the experiment. In both conditions‚ participants heard a discussion in the
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Techniques for Improving Eyewitness Testimony: The Cognitive Interview An eyewitness is somebody who sees an act‚ occurrence or happening and can give a firsthand account of the event. The police often rely on such people to provide accurate recollections of these situations in order to aid in their investigations. Research has shown however‚ that eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate and unreliable. It is absolutely crucial that eyewitness testimony be as accurate as possible‚ as there have been
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One study of eyewitness testimony (EWT) was by Loftus and Palmer. Their aim was to see whether asking leading questions had any effect on recall. The method used was a laboratory experiment and had two parts to it. The first was showing participants (Ppts) 7 films of car accidents. Participants were then asked questions‚ including “How fast were the cars travelling when they **** each other?” The asterisks were then replaced with a different verb‚ including “smashed” and “hit.” The second part
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