Imagine…
The next day you are the victim of a kidnapping in a botched armed robbery. Two suspects are kept in custody, and there are only 24 hours before police release them on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Would you be able to select the criminal out of an identity parade?
Sounds easy? The ten volunteers recruited by the BBC and Open University prove this isn’t so, in a modern day psychology experiment examining human memory and the reliability of eyewitness testimonies used within the justice system.
This groundbreaking footage recently broadcast on BBC 2 in April, has now been re-formatted into a three-part DVD with accompanying teacher’s notes entitled Eyewitness. With over three hours of excellent visual and broadcast quality footage, this teaching resource is not only fantastic value for money at only £15.00, but also ideal for covering AS/A-level AQA-A/B; Edexcel and OCR psychology specifications as well as GCSE specifications.
Now available to purchase from Uniview Worldwide – leading suppliers of psychology teaching resources - this product has immediately made it to number one in their best selling titles list. Plus at £15.00 per title, this compares favourably with many other professionally produced productions, being original, easy to follow and enlightening.
During the filming volunteers are exposed to two mock crimes and become key eyewitnesses. We follow the participants as they relate what they each saw and explore the fallibility of human memory and highlight how memory can be contaminated into remembering events or details that never existed.
Through the witnesses we see first hand how Greater Manchester Police would investigate these crimes in reality, and explore pioneering techniques used to retrieve the memories of victims to serious crimes.
The film includes several activities that can easily be reconstructed in class to allow students to experience for themselves how we all struggle when it comes to encoding, processing and recalling seemingly simple information.
Using psychology experts viewers are offered a real insight into the way our brain forms and stores memories as well as accessing the information when required. MRI scanning reveals the activity in participants' brains as they are asked to recall experiences.
Using several case studies the films explore how the brain recognises faces as a whole entity rather than a collection of individual features and the impact this knowledge has had on the way police forces draw up a list of similar looking suspects. Judicial systems have long relied heavily on eyewitness testimony, but recent research and the rise in the use of DNA has highlighted how precarious this reliance can be.
Dr Becky Milne is involved in the ongoing development of the cognitive interview, which applies current psychological knowledge to modern police investigation methods. During episode one, participants witness a fatal stabbing, whereby they recall details of the scenes they were exposed to.
Episode two explores whether participants fair any better when exposed to a violent crime second time around in a botched armed robbery. Whereas episode three then focuses on examples of real life cases from individuals who have witnessed violent crimes, as they unravel their true stories.
You can buy the DVD for only £15 at the Uniview Worldwide website.
