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Observation Skills

Objective: Students will learn about the reliability of witnesses by testing their own memory of things they have observed.

Materials: Each student will need

• Any materials that students will need for this section
• activity images

Observation Activities:

1. Use this activity to demonstrate to the students that memory is not literal. We do not remember exactly what we see. Our memories are affected by opinion, expectation, and other subjective factors.

   Observe the following picture for exactly 30 seconds. Look at everything you think might be important. After 30 seconds, answer these questions. Do not read the questions before you look at the picture! How observant were you? Compare your answers to the picture.

2. Have the students discuss the factors that may affect memory. Then do the next activity to allow the students to see how eyewitnesses may not be reliable.

   Choose several people to be observers and choose two people to be investigators. Allow the observers to look at this picture or this picture for 30 seconds. The investigators should not look at the picture. After 30 seconds, the investigators should begin questioning the observers. Here is a list of questions for the investigators to ask, if they are struggling. Then the investigators should attempt to reconstruct the scene based on the "eyewitness testimony".

   
   Compare the comments that the observers made. How many details were mentioned? Did some statements confict with other statements? In what way? Why?
3. Discuss Perceptual Fallacies and emphasize how the Scientific Method attempts to remove personal experience from the scientific process.
4. Demonstrate the effect that light can have on the way we perceive an object.

   Set up a dark area with only one source of light. Using either a red, blue or green light bulb, allow the students to briefly look at several colored paper cut-outs of various objects. For example, cut a heart shape from a yellow piece of construction paper, a diamond from a blue piece of paper and so on. Allow the students to look briefly at the cut-outs under red light. Ask them to write down the color of the object. Repeat this using different light bulbs and different cut-outs. You may want to follow-up with a discussion about the properties of light and combining light colors.

Alternate Activities:

• Blocking Communication : This is a game designed to test communication skills and the ability to describe strange objects.

Helpful Resources:
Detective Science, by Jim Wiese. ©1996, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-11980-6.