PSYC3315 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Eyewitness Testimony, Risk Assessment
Document Summary
Week seven: forensic cognition & memory & emotion. Effects of contradiction & ambiguity of evidence: risk assessment. Mental illness / illicit drugs & behavior: eyewitness testimony. Memory for traumatic events: strong belief in the public that if you experience smtg v emotional, you will never forget it. Concentration camp survivors: witnesses interviewed twice (n = 78, exposed to camp conditions for 4-5 months, assumption: 1940s moderately accurate; 1980s change in testimony due to forgetting, data based on court records, results. Trauma & suffering provide no guarantee that memories for those events will be entirely accurate / ever-lasting. Usually victims correctly recall the gist if traumatic events: judicial interest is in details. If attacker has weapon: effect of emotion (threat, anxiety, distinctiveness, attentional tunnel: pay close attention to what you focus on and not other stuff. Tunnel memory: showed subject 1 of 2 series of slides. 1 highly emotional, 1 not: eg.
