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1. Which of the following statements is correct in relation to acquisition?

a) While controlled experimental studies suggest that violence results in better witness accuracy, field studies of real-life witnesses suggest that those who are exposed to highly violent events do not give very accurate testimony.
b) The phenomenon of ‘weapon focus’ occurs only when the central detail is a gun.
c) Although it is interesting to understand the impact on witness memory of factors such as the type of crime, it is not critical because what is encoded during acquisition does not form the basis for what is stored in memory and eventually retrieved when giving testimony.
d) None of the above.

2. The status of the investigator, the type of the crime, the age of the witness and the type of questioning represent variables related to which topic of study by forensic psychologists?

a) Retrieval
b) Eye witness testimony
c) Crime
d) Criminal investigations
e) Maintaining violent behavior

3. Research examining witness memory has shown that after watching a traffic accident, if the car was described as “smashed,” then the witness was more likely to say that she had seen broken glass. This type of research has informed us about the influence of _____________.

a) Criminals
b) Leading questions
c) Watching car accidents
d) Cognitive interviews
e) Visual depictions of accidents

4. An issue that is broader than the strength of the evidence concerns its validity when applied to the real world. Bearing that in mind, which of the following would be relevant questions to ask?

a) Do the findings from psychological studies parallel what happens to real crime witnesses?
b) Should research findings be made available to the court to influence real trials?
c) Both (a) and (b).
d) Neither (a) nor (b).

5. All of the following refer to ways that police officers try to enhance memory retrieval in eye witnesses except for _____________.

a) Leading questions
b) Change perspective
c) Report everything
d) Context reinstatement
e) Reverse order

6. Highlight the TWO correct answers from the following which relate to why people make false confessions.

  1. Münsterberg raised the issue of why people make false confessions.
  2. Why people make false confessions is a very ‘geographical’ question.
  3. A distinction has been drawn between two types of false confession – voluntary and coerced.
  4. Coerced false confession can be broken down further into two sub-types – coerced–compliant and coerced–externalized false confessions.
a) 1 & 3
b) 2 & 4
c) 1 & 4
d) 2 & 3

7. The desire for notoriety, guilt feelings and the desire to protect someone else describe the psychology contributing to which forensic outcome?

a) Coerced confession
b) Coerced compliance
c) Voluntary confession
d) Voluntary compliance
e) (a) and (d)

8. Which of the following are true with respect to police interrogation?

  1. The laws relating to the conduct of police interrogation of suspects are the same from country to country.
  2. Police interrogation manuals from both Britain and America tell us that, from a police perspective, the interrogator must overcome the suspect’s natural resistance to tell the truth.
  3. From a police perspective, the interrogator must be skilled in the use of strategies to persuade the suspect to confess.
  4. All of the above.
a) 1 & 2
b) 2 & 3
c) 1 & 3
d) 4

9. Which TWO of the following general statements about interrogation would we say are true?

  1. There have recently been various legal changes in the rules governing the conduct of interrogations to eliminate dubious practice.
  2. After years of maintaining the same interrogational laws, there will soon be various legal changes in the rules governing the conduct of interrogations to eliminate dubious practice.
  3. Techniques are in place allowing us to see how the minutiae of social exchanges during interrogation influence the final outcome.
  4. It can be difficult to be certain of how the minutiae of social exchanges during interrogation influence the final outcome.
a) 1 & 2
b) 1 & 4
c) 2 & 3
d) 3 & 4

10. Which of the following is true when it comes to coerced internalization?

a) The essential element in a coerced–internalized confession is the suspect’s coming to believe that their own memory for events is correct and that the police version must therefore be false.
b) This type of confession is the direct opposite of cognitive dissonance.
c) Gudjonsson’s notion of interrogative suggestibility considers the extent to which people still maintain their responses despite intense questioning.
d) Situational stress, individual factors and current psychological state can all combine to trigger suggestibility to misleading information on the part of the suspect, and so produce a false confession.

11. The following qualities make a good liar except for __________.

a) Preparing a story on the spot
b) Being original
c) Good acting ability
d) Not experiencing emotion
e) Eloquent storyteller

12. Which of the following statements about offender profiling is FALSE?

a) Inductive methods of profiling are often referred to as ‘clinical’ in style, while deductive methods are seen as ‘statistical’.
b) Constructing psychological profiles of historical figures typically relies on specialist knowledge.
c) Both ‘organized’ and ‘disorganized’ offenders are careful not to leave evidence.
d) Profiling common characteristics of known offenders involves gathering data about the crime from multiple sources.

13. Which of the following are included in Farrington’s list of predictive factors?

a) Overly harsh or lax parenting style.
b) Criminality in the family.
c) Low intelligence.
d) All of the above.

14. Aggression and violent conduct can be best predicted by:

a) Antisocial behaviour
b) History of mental illness
c) Family criminality
d) (a) and (c)
e) All of the above

15. The second stage in the development of violent behaviour includes __________.

a) Distal factors
b) Conduct disorder
c) Poor parenting
d) Peers
e) (b) and (c)

16. Which THREE of the following statements are correct with regard to anger and moral reasoning?

  1. According to Novaco (11675), anger is the result of an environmental event triggering distinctive patterns of physiological and cognitive arousal. This trigger usually lies in the individual’s perception of the words and actions of another person.
  2. When we become angry, increased autonomic nervous system activity includes a rise in body temperature, perspiration, muscular tension and increased cardiovascular activity.
  3. Attentional cueing is the tendency to see hostility and provocation in the words and actions of other people.
  4. Cognitive distortions are our way of rationalizing or mislabelling someone else’s behaviour.
a) 1, 2 & 3
b) 2, 3 & 4
c) 1, 2 & 4

17. Research evidence suggests that violent people show deficits in which type of social information processing?

a) Anger management
b) Encoding social cues
c) Deception
d) Memory retrieval
e) School performance

18. The qualities of successful rehabilitation programs to treat offenders include ____________.

a) Cognitive interviews
b) Offender profiling
c) Being community-based
d) Focus on relationship with parents
e) There are no successful treatment programs for offenders

19. Which extensive, longitudinal research effort involving hundreds of families concluded that we need prevention strategies to reduce child and adolescent antisocial behavior?

a) Aggression replacement training
b) What Works program
c) Statement validity assessment
d) The Stanford study
e) The Cambridge study

20. As the evidence accumulates, a broad consensus has been reached regarding the characteristics of treatments that impact on offending. But which of the following is actually one of those characteristics?

a) Indiscriminate targeting of treatment programmes helps to reduce recidivism.
b) The type of treatment programme is important, with stronger evidence for unstructured behavioural and multi-modal approaches.
c) The most successful studies, while behavioural in nature, include a cognitive component.
d) The most effective programmes have low treatment integrity.

 

 

Copyright 2005 BPS Blackwell