KEY WORDS

Anxiety

A factor shown to affect the accuracy of EWT, suggests anxiety caused as a result of ‘weapon focus affect’ takes attention away from the perpetrator so reduces EWT accuracy.

Capacity

Refers to the amount or qunaitity of information that can be stored in memory.

Central Executive

The boss of working memory mode, directs attention to the slave systems: phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad.

Coding

Refers to the way in which information is changed and stored in memory.

Cognitive Interview

Developed by Geiselman et al (1985) in response to criticisms of the traditional police interview, identified that recall could be enhanced by: context reinstatement, report everything, recall from changed perspective and recall in reverse order.

Duration

Refers to the length of time information is held for in memory.

Episodic Memory

Personal memories which have 3 elements: details of the event, context and emotions, associated with the hippocampus.

Episodic Buffer

A component of the working memory model, a temporary store that integrates information from other components and maintains a sense of time, so events occur in a continuing sequence.

Eyewitness Testimony

Evidence given in court or a police investigation by someone who had witnessed a crime or accident.

Forgetting

A failure to remember something, can occur due to interference or retrieval failure.

Leading QQuestions

Questions worded to suggest a particular answer e.g. ‘did you see the broken glass?’ implies there was broken glass so the witness is more likely to say ‘yes’.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

A ‘permanent’ store that holds unlimited amounts of information for long periods, there are different types: episodic, semantic and procedural.

Misleading Information

A factor that can affect the accuracy of EWT, it is incorrect information given to an eyewitness following an event, can be during post-event discussion or in the form of a leading question.

Multi-Store Model (MSM)

Proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin, has three components: sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory, each store has a different capacity, duration and coding.

Phonological Loop

Component in the working memory model, deals with auditory information, subdivided into the phonological store (holds words we hear) and the articulatory process (allows us to repeat words in a loop).

Post-Event Discussion

A potential source of misleading information where witnesses discuss what they saw after an event, it can affect the accuracy of their accounts.

Proactive Interference

Occurs when old information stored in LTM interferes with the learning of new information, usually if they are similar e.g. trying to remember a new mobile phone number but only being able to remember the old number.

Procedural Memory

Includes our memory of performed motor tasks/skills e.g. swimming, writing, acquired through repetition and practice, associated with the cerebellum and motor cortex.

Retrieval Failure

An explanation for forgetting from LTM, refers to difficulties in recall that are due to the absence of correct retrieval cues or triggers.

Retroactive Interference

Occurs when learning of new information interferes with the recall of old information from LTM, usually if the information is similar, e.g. once you have learned a new phone number it is difficult to remember the old number.

Semantic Memory

Includes knowledge of facts, concepts and meaning e.g. London is the capital of England, associated with the temporal lobe.

Sensory Register

The memory store where information enters the senses, separate for each sense: iconic store codes visual, echoic store codes auditory, only last a brief moment unless attention is directed to it, then information is transferred to STM.

Short-Term Memory

A temporary memory store that holds limited information for a short period, a unitary store in MSM but contains many components in the WMM.

Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

The component in working memory that processes visual information (visual cache) and spatial information (inner scribe).

Working Memory Model

Proposed by Baddeley and Hitch, explaIns findings that couldn’t be explained by the MSM, a multi-component system of STM, consists of: central executive, phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad.