Cognitive - Cognitive Interview & Improving Memory

Question 1

Who designed the Cognitive Interview?

Answer 1

Fisher & Geisalman

Question 2

What are the 4 main components of the Cognitive Interview?

Answer 2

• Report everything
• Context reinstatement
• Recall in reverse order
• Recall from a different perspective

Question 3

Explain ‘Report everything’ in terms of the Cognitive Interview

Answer 3

Reporting all detail regardless of how trivial it may appear. This would ensure no information is lost that could be useful

Question 4

Explain ‘Context reinstatement’ in terms of the Cognitive Interview

Answer 4

Recreates the scene of the incident in the mind of the witness, including sights, sounds, emotions, mindset at the time.
Evidence suggests we are more likely to recall information if it is in a similar context to how it was encoded.

Question 5

Explain ‘Recall in reverse order’ and ‘Recall from a different perspective’ in terms of the Cognitive Interview

Answer 5

Based on the idea that once information is stored, there is more than one way of retrieving it

Question 6

Why might the Cognitive Interview lead to improved recall?

Answer 6

• Avoids leading questions
• Highlights details that may contradict each other
• Provides cues for retrieval
• Can stimulate previously ‘dormant’ neurones, accessing further details

Question 7

Name a study into the effectiveness of the Cognitive Interview

Answer 7

Geiselman

Question 8

State the procedure of Geiselman’s study

Answer 8

got participants to watch a video of a violent crime. A few days later they were interviewed in one of 3 ways: standard police interview, cognitive interview or under hypnosis.

Question 9

State the results of Geiselman’s study

Answer 9

The Cognitive Interview was found to trigger more accurate recall
(41 correct items compared to 30 in the standard interviews)

Question 10

Name and explain a meta-analysis into the Cognitive Interview

Answer 10

Kohnken et al
Carried out a meta-analysis of 53 studies and found that the CI could elicit an average of 34% more detail than the standard interview

Question 11

State a weakness of the cognitive interview

Answer 11

Tends to be too time-consuming

Question 12

What 2 ways can memory be improved?

Answer 12

• Organisation strategies

- Encoding strategies

Question 13

What are the 2 Organisation strategies?

Answer 13

• Mnemonics using visual imagery

- Chunking

Question 14

What is the encoding strategy?

Answer 14

Encoding specificity principle

Question 15

What are the 3 main categories in Mnemonics and visual imagery?

Answer 15

• Stories
• Method of Loci
• Peg word method

Question 16

Explain ‘stories’ as a method of improving memory

Answer 16

To put lists of words into the format of a story, where each item forms a very visual part of the story line

Question 17

Explain ‘method of loci’ as a method of improving memory

Answer 17

Identifying a set of familiar places (the number correlating with the number of items you need to remember) and delegate each item to a location. The locations act as retrieval cues because you already know them well

Question 18

Explain the ‘peg-word method’ as a method of memory improvement

Answer 18

Where retrieval cues are a set of known ‘pegs’, such as learning a set of objects that rhyme with numbers (e.g one is gun) and say the first object on the list is tomatoes, you imagine tomatoes being shot by a gun

Question 19

What did Paivio conclude about visual imagery?

Answer 19

That it works better with concrete nouns (food items, stationery etc) rather than with more abstract terms such as hope because concrete nouns are encoded verbally and visually, whereas abstract words are more likely to just be verbally.
He called this the ‘dual encoding hypothesis’

Question 20

Name and explain a study into visual imagery as a method of memory improvement

Answer 20

Bower
Gave a list of items to 2 groups to memorise, where one was told to use visual imagery.
80% of that group were likely to remember the second word, where as 45% of the control group could

Question 21

Explain ‘chunking’ as a method of memory improvement

Answer 21

Understanding material allows us to integrate and unify material. Chunking involves putting information into sub-groups to condense it

Question 22

Name and explain a study into chunking

Answer 22

Katona
Asked people to remember a list of single digit numbers, but once commas were put in, dividing them into square numbers, they were easier to remember due to being chunked into a pattern that is easier to understand

Question 23

What is the encoding specificity principal?

Answer 23

Where information (cues) about the learning environment/internal environment was encoded along with the required data the memorise

Question 24

Explain ‘context-dependant recall’ as a method of improving memory

Answer 24

Having the same location as encoding when retrieving data

Question 25

Name, explain and evaluate a study into Context-dependent recall

Answer 25

Smith
Gave 80 words to learn in a basement. Then asked to recall either in a basement of a 5th floor of a building.
Average recall for basement: 18 words
Average recall for 5th floor: 12 words

However, the environmental differences need to be substantial before any significant difference in recall performance

Question 26

What is state-dependent recall?

Answer 26

Recalling information in the same psychological state as when encoded

Question 27

Name and explain a study into state-dependent recall

Answer 27

Goodwin

Found that heavy drinkers who learn things in a drunken state are more likely to recall them when drunk than sober

Question 28

Why do organisation strategies work at improving memory?

Answer 28

Active processing of hierarchies and mnemonics requires semantic/meaningful thought.

Question 29

State the main strength of research into strategies for memory improvement

Answer 29

Lab experiments are in a controlled environment, with control over the IV and external variables. A casual relationship can be assumed and reliability and internal validity improved

Question 30

State the main weakness of research into strategies for memory improvement

Answer 30

Artificiality:
Don’t reflect real life memory tasks and lack ecological validity. This would mean that participants don’t behave naturally (demand characteristics) and so results may lack internal validity