Loftus and Palmer APFCC

Loftus and Palmer aimed to investigate whether the language used when interviewing an eye witness about an event can act as a leading question and therefore distort the reconstruction of the event in the memory system. They were interested in factors that can influence the accuracy of eye witness testimony, making it unreliable. Allport and Postman demonstrated how schemas already set in the memory system can affect the reconstruction of an event. Participants were shown a slide of a white man attacking a black man with a razor, and were told to report the scene to the second person, who then had to report it to the third and so on. The scene became distorted over time, and over 50% who received the final description had the razor in the hands of the black man. It seems that participants 'prejudice' schemas (blacks more violent than whites) cause them to distort the way they constructed and stored the information in memory. The study shows that we reconstruct our memory based on schemas already stored. Eye witness testimony is important to the judicial system, as witness accounts can often influence the outcome of a jury. It is well reported that people are often inaccurate at remembering faces, weapons and numerical data such as speed and time. It is therefore evident that there are a number of variables that can affect eye witness testimony, such as the way in which a

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 869
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

Two attributional biases with evidence

Discuss at least two attributional biases, refer to evidence in your answer (10) Attribution is judging the causes of behaviour, the decision is made that behaviour is caused by internal factors OR external factors. A dispositional attribution is made when we can decide that someone's behaviour is due to their personality or an internal cause. This means that the behaviour is seen as an outward manifestation of an inward quality. A situational attribution is made when we decide that someone's behaviour is the result of the situation or the circumstances which they find themselves in. This means that the cause is external or beyond the control of the person. In social psychology, the actor is the person producing the behaviour and the observer is the watcher of the behaviour. The Fundamental Attribution Error is the general tendency observers have to decide that an actor's behaviour has an internal cause. We have the general belief that a person's behaviour and actions are due to their own personality traits. It is likely that this is because of an expectation that our behaviour and personality match or fit each other. A real life example is "He dropped the jug because he is clumsy" Nisbett et al (1973) wanted to see if people tend to attribute the cause of a person's behaviour as due to an internal cause rather than external cause. Participants were asked to explain

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 676
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

The cognitive perspective in psychology is often used to explain behaviour. Discuss the cognitive perspective in psychology. In your answer, refer to at least two topics that you have studied in psychology.

The cognitive perspective in psychology is often used to explain behaviour. Discuss the cognitive perspective in psychology. In your answer, refer to at least two topics that you have studied in psychology The cognitive approach focuses on the cognitive processes between the stimulus and response. It see's humans as information processors, much like computers, as information is received, processed and then used to guide behaviour. In 1973, Mischel distinguished five variables that influence the response to a stimulus. These variables are competencies, encodings, expectancies, values and plans. Together, they influence the attribution process and so affect behaviour. Unlike behaviourists, cognitive psychologists include the internal cognitive processes between stimulus and response and so when compared to the behaviourist approach, cognitive psychologists argue that humans make sense of the stimulus before responding, rather than simply responding in an unthinking way to a stimulus. However, the cognitive approach is often criticised for being too mechanistic and reductionist. This is because it reduces complex human processes and behaviour to those of a computer and ignores the fact that humans are biological organisms and are not machines. One topic that the cognitive approach applies to is anxiety disorders, and more specifically, phobias. Cognitive psychologists

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 594
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

The Biological model

Outline & evaluate the Biological/Medical Model and consider its strengths and weaknesses. The biological model assumes that all mental illnesses have a physiological cause. One assumption of the biological model is genetic inheritance; it assumes that genes have a major effect on the likelihood of developing a mental illness. Illnesses can be inherited by parents and relatives. Kendler et al found that relatives of SZs were 18 times more likely to develop the illness than a matched group. Another assumption is biochemistry, this is chemical imbalances in the brain are involved in certain disorders; neurotransmitters play an important role in behaviour. It has been found that an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine has been linked to SZ. Finally infection is a common cause for physical illness; Barr et al found a significant link between mothers who had influenza whilst pregnant and their child developing SZ. As there are physiological causes of abnormality therefore the treatments are physiological these are Drugs, ECT, which involves a small electric shock being sent to the brain causing a small seizure/convulsion and psychosurgery. Where electrodes are inserted into the brain and the infected part of the brain tissue is 'burnt' away. There are many strengths and weaknesses with this approach, firstly it is a humane approach unlike the cognitive approach, and the

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 515
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

Outline & Evaluate the Cognitive Interview

Outline & Evaluate the Cognitive Interview The cognitive interview was devised by psychologists in order to eliminate the effects of misleading questions and misleading information. The process consists of first reporting everything the witness can remember, even information they believe to be unimportant. Then the witness is asked to mentally instate their experience, where they mentally use their sense to recall information. After this the witness is asked to change the order in which they recall the event, for example going backwards, and finally the witness is asked to change the perspective from which they recall the data, telling the officer the situation from above or as an onlooker. Fisher and Geiselman found that reporting everything and mental reinstatement check for consistency of the eyewitness report, and changing the order and perspective helps to create a different route to recall, increasing the amount of information. The cognitive interview has strong supporting research; Kohnken et al for example, reviewed research into eyewitness testimony and found that the cognitive interview increased the amount of correct information recalled by 48%, compared to the standard interview. Also, Stein & Memon found that the cognitive interview is effective because people remember more when given cues. They made Brazilian female cleaners watch a video of an abduction, and

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 461
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

Define short-term memory and describe the main factors that influence the number of items recalled from short-term memory. Evaluate Nairne's theory relative to traditional theories, clearly stating your criteria for evaluation.

Define short-term memory and describe the main factors that influence the number of items recalled from short-term memory. Evaluate Nairne's theory relative to traditional theories, clearly stating your criteria for evaluation. Memory has always been an area of psychology to receive a great deal of attention. In 1890, William James [2], stated that there were two components to the human memory. He made the distinction between a 'primary' memory, now termed short-term memory and a secondary memory, now termed long-term memory. Eysenck and Keane (2002 [3]) state that the primary memory relates to information that remains in consciousness after it has been perceived and forms part of the psychological present. They then state that secondary memory contains information about events that have left consciousness and are therefore part of the psychological past (Eysenck and Keane 2002 [3]). In the 1960's a major debate surfaced about whether the short-term memory and long-term memory worked independently of each other or whether they were a part of the same unitary system. Many theories were developed on this basis and there is a great deal of evidence to support the fact that they work independently and have very separate functions. As a result of this debate, many researchers became interested in the concept of short-term memory. Through experimental evidence it became apparent

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 3768
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

Describe and Evaluate 2 Models Of Memory

Describe and Evaluate 2 Models Of Memory In this essay 2 models of memory will be described and compared. They are the Atkinson and Sniffrin model of memory, the Multistore model, and Crain and Lockhart model, the Levels of Processing Model. Models of memory are primitive diagrams of human memory to help understand the flow of information and how it is stored. In order to evaluate those 2 models appropriately it is important to understand how old they are. The Multistore Model of Memory by Atkinson and Shiffrin is a very primitive model although it does try to explain how the memory works quite well. It recognises 3 memory stores - the Sensory Memory Store, the short-term memory store and the long-term memory store. The environment makes available a variety of sources of information. The information comes in through the sensory system - through one of the five human senses. For a brief time it gets stored in the sensory memory store; 2 seconds for auditory and 0.5 second for visual information. It is an exact copy of the stimulus, although it lasts for a very short time. The experiment done by Sperling in 1960, where he showed a quick image to the participants and asked them to write the answers down, supports the theory of existence of the Sensory memory store, as participants could only remember 36% of the image on average. According to the model, if attention is paid to

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 1840
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

Craik and Lockhart believed that depth is a critical concept for levels of processing theory.

Levels of Processing Theory Depth of Analysis Craik and Lockhart believed that depth is a critical concept for levels of processing theory. * The depth of processing of a stimulus has a substantial effect on its memorability, i.e. how well it is remembered. * Deeper levels of analysis produce more elaborate, longer lasting and stronger memory traces than do shallow levels of analysis. Craik (1973) defined depth as "the meaningfulness extracted from the stimulus rather than in terms of the number of analyses performed upon it". Rehearsal or repetition is not a form of deep processing because it only involves a repeated "number of analyses", and not and extraction of meaningfulness. Craik and Tulving used semantic processing to represent deep processing and the physical analysis to represent shallower processing. As the theory would predict, participants remembered those words that were deeply processed better than those processed shallowly. The findings of Hyde and Jenkins (1973) also support this theory. Elaboration Craik and Tulving's study also looked at how the elaboration of processing can lead to a greater recall. In a further experiment, the participants were presented on each trial with a word and a sentence containing a blank. They were then asked to decide whether the word fitted into the uncompleted question. Recall was twice as high for words accompanying

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 2805
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

What effect does the order in which a testimony is presented have on persuading a jury?

Psychology Revision – Persuading A Jury Q3)a) What effect does the order in which a testimony is presented have on persuading a jury? (10) A3)a) The order in a which testimony is heard can have different effects on the jury’s verdict. One such study that investigates this is Pennington’s study on primacy effects. He studied the theory that because the minds of the jurors and all those present in the courtroom are more awake and interested in the trial’s beginning, than in the end when it is believe that the freshness and interest in the trail will have worn off. Because of the adversarial justice system used in UK courts, the jury have the final verdict of guilt or innocence on the accused. And because, in this system, the prosecution is heard first and the defence last, it can be assumed that the number of guilty verdicts heard under this system is greater than the number of innocent verdicts because the jury pay more attention to the case when the prosecution is heard. In the study conducted, Pennington used a mock jury with a group of participants who heard the prosecution first and the defence last, and another group who heard the defence first and the prosecution last. He measured the amount of guilty verdicts in each and found that there was a greater tendency to find the same defendant guilty in conditions that reflected a real adversarial system. This study

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 569
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay

Measurements of Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimonies

Measurements of Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimonies Abstract This study was designed using an account of a car accident. The aim was to measure the affect of re-wording a single sentence, on the estimation of how much alcohol was in the bloodstream of the driver. 20 undergraduate participants (10 male and 10 female) all with clean licences were used. They were randomly given a vignette describing the car accident, where half the subjects read that the driver 'smashed into' a garden wall, and the other half read that the driver 'bumped into' the garden wall. Participants were required to read the vignette and then estimate how much over the British legal alcohol limit the driver was, for example, 200% indicates that the driver was twice the limit, 110% would mean he was 10% over and 50% would mean he was half the limit. The hypothesis predicts that those who received the vignette stating the driver 'smashed into' the wall are more likely to estimate a higher limit, than those who read that the driver had 'bumped into' the wall. The results of this investigation show that the mean estimation for those in the 'smashed into' condition (143%), was significantly greater than those in the 'bumped into' condition (108%), where p<0.05. This means that the experimental hypothesis was accepted, and the null hypothesis was rejected. Furthermore, these results gave further

  • Ranking:
  • Word count: 1767
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
Access this essay