To what extent does research support the view that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?

Authors Avatar

To what extent does research support the view that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?

 Schemas are knowledge packages which are built up through experience of the world and which enable us to make sense of familiar situations and aid the interpretation of new information. Cohen(1993) suggested a few different ways that schemas might lead to reconstructive memory, some are that we tend to ignore aspects of a scene that do not fit the currently activated schema and also we can store the central features of an even without having to store the exact details.

          Bartlett (1932) carried out a study of reconstructive memory. The aim was to investigate the effects of schemas on participants recall. Bartlett found that that the distortions increased over successive recalls and most of these reflected the participant’s attempts to make the story more like a story from their own culture. The changes included rationalisations, flattening and sharpening, these changes made the story easier to remember. He concluded that memory was forever being reconstructed because each successive reproduction showed more changes, which contradicted Bartlett’s original expectation that the reproductions would eventually become fixed. The research is important, because it provided some of the first evidence that what we remember depends in an important way on out prior knowledge in the form of schemas. Bartlett assumed that the distortions in recall produced by his participants were due to genuine problems with memory, but the instructions he used were vague. He also assumed that the schemas influence what happens at the time of retrieval, but have no effect on what happens at the time of comprehension of a story, other evidence suggests that schemas influence comprehension and retrieval.

Join now!

          Brewer and Treyens (1981) investigated the effects of schemas on visual memory by asking their 30 participants, one at a time, to wait in a room for 35 seconds. The findings showed that the participants were most likely to recall the typical office items, for example, items with high schema expectancy, but were less successful at recalling the incompatible items such as the brick; however eight participants recalled the really bizarre item, the skull. Most of the errors in recall were substitutions, the other errors involved wrong placement of items. These findings suggest that participants ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Here's what a star student thought of this essay

Avatar

The Quality of Written Communication (QWC) is flawless. These types of essay questions have a heavier weighting toward QWC than most other psychology questions and it is good to see the candidate realise this and make almost no errors in spelling or grammar. As QWC is marked highly here, spell-checking and re-reading is recommended to ensure clarity of written expression.

The Level of Analysis here is quite hard to determine, as the questions to ask for candidates to satisfy AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (evaluation). There is an accurate use of highly complex terminology and the candidate displays a profound knowledge of a large number of studies pertaining to eye-witness testimony. But there does not appear to be much in the way of explicit, effective evaluation of the studies, such as the complication of face validity that may arise whilst trying to examine cognitions like memory, or the fact that many cognitive studies have high levels of control due to being set in artificial conditions with high levels of control (e.g. Loftus & Palmer, Cohen, Kent & Yuille). Because of this, the evaluative points are limited are therefore the candidate cannot expect to reach the higher band of marks for this answer. I would recommend the candidate draw back much of the explanation of the studies and possibly drop a few of them altogether, so as to leave sufficient time to consider the evaluation of the studies, which would far better answer the question "To what extent does research support the view that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?" than simply outlining studies. As it stands, this candidate's lack of concluding paragraph and evaluative points mean it's stuck at a low C grade because there is so little focus on AO2, and an unfair bias towards AO1.

The Response to the Question here is excellent, though it often forgets it's supposed to be a cohesive essay, rather than just a chunk of information. The candidate has a nigh-on encyclopaedic knowledge of a number of studies, all of which are entirely appropriate to answering a question which asks about the reliability of eye-witness testimony. There is a bias towards research that proves schemas affect memory and the encoding of information, but this is nothing that will hinder the candidate as it is all relevant information - some examiners may require a wider range of conclusions though, such as perhaps, a greater recognition of the effect of post-event information and leading questions (though this has been sufficiently covered by the Loftus & Palmer study in this case). Where the candidate drops marks is that they have no real introduction or conclusion, leaving the essay very open and sounding incomplete by ending it with a vocabulary-heavy paragraph on just one of many studies. An introductory paragraph outlining what eye-witness testimony is and the extensive research into it may be advisable, and a conclusive paragraph summarising the findings in the above essay as well as the difficulty of reliably testing for hypothetical constructs like memory, intelligence and schemas could help round the essay off.