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Question 39

Article: Memory on Trial

How much can we trust what we remember? For decades, our legal systems have placed immense faith in the testimony of eyewitnesses. We assume that if a person sees an event, their brain registers a permanent record of what occurred, which can later be retrieved intact.

However, cognitive scientists argue that memory is not a pristine archive, but a highly malleable reconstruction. A nationwide survey highlighted the vast gulf between public perception and scientific consensus on memory reliability:

  • When asked if they agreed that "once an event is experienced, the memory is permanently recorded in the brain exactly as it happened," 68% of the public strongly agreed or agreed, compared to 0% of cognitive psychologists.
  • When asked if they agreed that "an eyewitness's confidence in their testimony is a direct indicator of its accuracy," 55% of the public agreed, whereas 94% of experts disagreed, noting that confidence is easily manipulated after the fact.

Adapted from an article in Cognitive Science Monthly.

Describe the Loftus and Palmer (1974) study into eyewitness testimony and explain how its findings relate to the article above.

[6]
Markscheme

Memory Questions

  1. A Level
  2. /Psychology
  3. /Memory

163 exam-style questions on OCR A Level Psychology Memory, covering Loftus and Palmer (1974): Eyewitness testimony and Grant et al. (1998): Context-dependent memory. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.

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