Eye Witness Testimony: How Reliable Is It?

For today's activities, you'll be completing this worksheet and viewing the two video clips below. Your teacher (either myself or the sub) will lead you in a discussion about what you learned.

NOTE:
To become familiar with the research on human memory, we will be viewing, in two parts, a video that shows how basic memory concepts apply to eye-witness testimony. The video we are about to watch details the way in which memory impacted the outcome of a criminal investigation of a rape. While it is not graphic, and you are only provided enough details about the crime itself to understand its relation to cognitive science, this can be an emotionally evocative topic for some. If you would prefer to instead use your Chromebook and headphones to the alternate video posted below (a TED Talk by the same cognitive psychologist profiled in the video shown in class). That talk still mentions crimes, including rape cases, but is more academic and less personal.

Clip #1


Clip #2



Alternate Video Option: