PSYC 3020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Eyewitness Memory, Free Recall, Naturalistic Observation

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3020
• Professor: kaitlyn mclaughin

Document Summary

Eyewitness memory and identification eyewitness evidence: widely studied, one of biggest, play role in convictions, imperfect, can lead to wrongful convictions, only problematic when errors, can be accurate but lots of opportunities for inaccuracy memory, 3 stages: Storage - long or short term; short can be turned to long; won"t stay perfectly can change. Archival data (ex. looking back into history) Naturalistic observation (ex. watching police do lineups) Laboratory simulations (ex. doing a mock crime in class) estimator and system variables. System variable because it increased/decreased accuracy due to taking off pressure; wanted to see if changing instructions had an affect: ex. Estimator variable because wanted to look if stress affected unchangeable circumstances police interviews - try to accurate detailed info about case and inaccurate can lead to wrong info police interview procedures: hypnosis. Can be used to facilitate retrieval of memories. Evidence suggests witnesses may provide more details under hypnosis, but these may or may not be correct.