advise a documentary team who are making a programme about detecting deception. The documentary makers need to know if their plans for the programme’s content are appropriate. They have come to you for your expert guidance and opinion on the topic.

Advising documentary makers

This TMA requires you to advise a documentary team who are making a programme about detecting deception. The documentary makers need to know if their plans for the programme’s content are appropriate. They have come to you for your expert guidance and opinion on the topic.

This TMA has two parts:

Documentary proposal

You have been approached to act as an academic adviser on a new documentary. The pitch is as follows.

Knowledge and understanding

On completing this TMA you will have developed knowledge and understanding of:

• key concepts, theories, debates, and research relevant to forensic psychology
• the complex inter-relationships between theory and research, and related policy and practice in the field of forensic psychology
• the influence of power, values, and ethics on research and professional practice within forensic psychology
• the role of research methods in what constitutes evidence in forensic psychology and the way evidence is used in practice.

Cognitive skills

On completing this TMA you will be able to:

• define, critically examine and/or apply concepts, theories, evidence, and research in forensic psychology
• independently select, interpret, and evaluate different types of evidence and research, demonstrating a clear awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of research, methods, and data
• independently evaluate the relevance and application of evidence and research methods to policy and practice in forensic psychology
• construct convincing, well-evidenced arguments regarding complex scenarios or case studies within forensic psychology.

Key skills

On completing this TMA, you will be able to:

• independently identify key issues and generate pertinent questions within forensic psychology
• produce complex reports/text suitable for varying audiences.

Practical and/or professional skills

On completing this TMA, you will be able to:

• independently plan, conduct, and manage work to meet agreed deadlines
• recognise the relevance and applicability of reflective, analytic, and evaluative skills to varying contexts.

Part 1

Part 1 of this assignment asks you to write a presentation which informs the documentary proposal. The proposal refers to what people believe about catching liars (which, as you will be aware from your studies, is really asking you about myths regarding how to detect deception). It also asks about psychological research and what that can tell us about our abilities at spotting liars, as well as how that knowledge has been obtained. It is important to note that the production company seem to be aware that the beliefs that ordinary people have about catching liars might be different from what the psychological research says.

You may find it helpful to begin planning your assignment by looking at the way the documentary makers have outlined the issues they are interested in section by section.

1. What are the key beliefs people hold about how to catch liars?

   This section allows you to talk through some of the beliefs that people have about detecting deception. This section should be kept concise. Remember to base your work on evidence rather than conjecture.

2. What do psychologists say about our abilities in detecting deception? How have they researched the topic?

   This section allows you to introduce research which has empirically tested the abilities of people to detect deception, and comment on the findings. You can introduce research here which the evidence suggests is the most promising in terms of how deception can be discriminated from truth telling. In the second part you can talk about different research methods and approaches to researching deception.

3. How useful has the contribution of psychologists been to the field?

   This is the section in which you can really critically evaluate the contribution of psychology. How has the research been useful? What are the shortcomings of how psychologists have researched it? What are the promising new contributions to the field?

You should be aware that the documentary team look like they are setting up the programme to have a focus on busting some of the myths about lie detection, by having a first section which focuses on the myths and later sections which focus on what psychological research has found, and how it has been obtained.

Remember that all the way throughout the presentation your focus should be on using the academic literature to ground you in the evidence you provide. Your presentation should provide an overview of current psychological knowledge that the documentary should cover. Your task therefore is to translate the academic literature that you find into a more digestible format for the production team, as a “lay” audience. Because you are being assessed on your ability to critically evaluate research, we would advise you to devote less space to part one of the programme and more to parts two and three.

The presentation should include speaker notes to accompany the slides, as a demonstration of what you would say if you were presenting it live. Your speaker notes (your script for if you were presenting it live) should be approximately 1000 words, with no more than 250 words on the slides themselves. Remember also who your audience is and consider the language you use in your presentation, as this is not an academic audience who will understand language such as ‘statistical significance’ or perhaps even the nuances of slightly different approaches to research. Importantly, your presentation must provide clear advice for the documentary makers as to what they should cover in the programme and how, in your expert judgement.

As you have already had feedback on your presentation skills in TMA 02, this should be an opportunity for you to consolidate them in preparation for TMA 05. As with previous assignments, think carefully about your intended audience, what will hold their interest, and what they need to get out of the presentation to help them progress in their work.

Part 2

Part 2 of this assignment requires you to select, summarise and critique research findings relevant to the proposed focus of the documentary. You have gained experience in literature searching and critiquing throughout the module, so for this part of the assignment you need to ensure that you critically evaluate the evidence you have selected rather than just describing it. For a critical outline you need to summarise the main points of the research, contextualise it within the wider literature, and highlight its strengths and weaknesses. You can use a critical crib sheet to identify the points you want to make. However, your critical outline needs to be written in full prose rather than the short notes you might make on a crib sheet. This part of the TMA may be written in a more formal style than the presentation but remember that you are still writing for a non-academic audience. You should take this into account when discussing any technical terms, methodological issues, or statistical data.

Relevant material for TMA 04

Although there may be issues from earlier blocks which could be relevant to this proposed documentary, for TMA 04 you only need to draw on issues from Block 3. Week 22 is likely to be particularly relevant to this assessment.

For Part 1, you need to produce a short PowerPoint presentation which addresses the current state of psychological knowledge in the area chosen by the documentary makers. You should draw on Block 3 material for this, but you should go beyond the module materials, for example by referring to the wider literature you have found for part 2 of the assignment.

For Part 2 of the assignment, you will need to conduct a literature search to find relevant academic papers to critically outline for the documentary team. These items should be peer-reviewed (i.e., published in academic journals) and could be empirical (i.e., research) articles, review articles or meta-analyses. They should not be opinion pieces or editorials. They should not be articles that you have already seen in the module.

External sources of information

You are expected to draw on an appropriate range of empirical and theoretical evidence in your assignment, which will require you to go beyond the module materials. As with previous assignments, try to ensure that the literature you draw on is as up to date as possible.

Remember to keep notes on your searches, as well as recording the full reference information of the sources you read. This will make it much easier to avoid going in circles (or missing important information) when you are exploring the literature – as well as making life much easier when you come to write your References section.

Format and submission

• You should submit two files for the TMA: (1) a PowerPoint file for Part 1 and (2) a Word document for Part 2 of this TMA along with a text copy of the speaker notes from your Part 1 presentation.

• You need to include your speaker notes within your presentation, so make sure to save it as a whole PowerPoint presentation, not as slides only (saving as a whole presentation is usually the default, but check your settings to make sure).

• Ensure that you include references for any sources you cite, as a References slide for Part 1 (which does not count towards the word limit) and as a References list for Part 2 (which also does not count towards the word limit).