Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony
Full course description
This course provides contemporary insights into the psychology of eyewitness testimony. For example, students will learn about eyewitness memory, if and why eyewitnesses report details of a crime, how well eyewitnesses are able to recall a crime they experienced, and whether they are subsequently able to identify the culprit from a line-up. Students will also learn about human face recognition, the principles underlying composite construction, and the best practices in for constructing and administering line-ups. Other issues that are addressed in this course relate to whether claims of repression and subsequent recovery of traumatic experiences can be valid or whether they (sometimes) reflect false memories, whether the testimonies provided by young children are as reliable as those of adults' , and what all of the studied topics imply for the courtroom. By the end of the course students will: be familiar with current issues and controversies in eyewitness research; be able to give descriptions of typical methods and experimental work in these disciplines; and have insight into the problems that arise from court decisions which hinge upon testimonies from eyewitness.
The final assessment for this course is a numerical grade between 0,0 and 10,0.
Course objectives
- students can apply theories to memory to cases on the reliability of testimonies;
- students can recognize important research methods and paradigms in legal psychology;
- students can recognize important factors related to the reliability of eyewitness memory (e.g., co-witness effects, cognitive interview);
- students can assess the reliability of eyewitnesses’ testimony in a given case;
- students can discuss relevant theories and link them to legal cases;
- students can recognize and discuss controversies revolving around psychology of testimony (e.g., repression);
- students can design research studies by using the studied research paradigms and methodology.