Essays on Eyewitness testimony

Despite the dwindling importance of details in our everyday existence, distressing incidents such as abduction, homicide, altercation, or sexual assault possess the potential to revolutionize everything. These encounters leave us mentally drained and elicit physiological reactions like heightened heart rate and enhanced blood circulation towards vital organs as we psychologically gear up for a fight-or-flight…

Area Eyewitness testimonies are a very Important area within cognitive psychology and relates directly to the human brain and memory. Cognitive psychology refers to the study of an individual’s internal processes, more specifically how they perceive information, how they learn, remember and think. The way that an individual functions cognitively directly impacts the eyewitness statement…

The Cognitive Interview and Eyewitness Credibility My Initial Hypothesis Hypothesis: The cognitive interview increases the credibility of eyewitness testimony by decreasing memory error and confabulations. Information is the lifeblood of a criminal investigation. The ability of investigators to obtain useful and accurate information from eyewitnesses of crimes is crucial to effective law enforcement, yet full…

Since the early 1970s, Loftus and her colleagues have been studying the role of post-event suggestion in the creation of false memories, a finding now referred to as the “misinformation effect” (Loftus, 1997, p. 70).  In the first experiment of an early study (Loftus & Palmer, 1974), participants viewed brief scenes (5 to 30 s)…

An eyewitness testimony is a report made by a person who observed an event. Police, prosecutors, juries, and judges in court generally believe, trust, and accept eyewitness testimony, especially if no other evidence (objects, documentary, and/or physical evidence) is available and if the eyewitness has no reason nor motivation to give false statements (Wells et…