Autism Interviews Flashcards
Crane et al 2016
o 69% police interactions ‘unsatisfactory’:
* Treatment.
* Explanations.
* Adaptations and support.
* Police knowledge and awareness.
* Interviews:
Difficult for autistic people to access.
Police want to make adaptations, but unsure how.
Crane and Goddard 2008
o Fewer episodic memories and harder to retrieve.
o More general and factual information.
o Difficulties in putting together the who / what / when / where.
o Lack contextual detail.
* Source monitoring difficulties (Bowler et al, 2004) – can remember factual and general info, but not where you learnt it.
Bowler et al 1997, 2004
o Autistic people can recall as much as non-autistic people from episodic memory if appropriately prompted.
o Autistic people perform as well for cued recall and recognition memory as non-autistic people, lower performance on free recall.
* Memories are there, it is recall that needs to be supported
* Unlikely that the standard cognitive interview will work though.
Maras & Bowler 2012
Physical context reinstatement
The findings suggest that people with ASD may rely more heavily on external cues, such as physical context, to access episodic memories. This contrasts with neurotypical individuals, who more often use internal or self-generated cues.
Environment effects
Research highlights that autistic individuals are particularly sensitive to sensory stimuli (e.g., bright lights, noise) and may experience heightened anxiety in unfamiliar or overstimulating environments. (Crane et al., 2016)
Communication effects
Autistic people may struggle with understanding figurative language, ambiguous phrasing, or implied meanings. Direct questioning improves comprehension.
autistic individuals might struggle with open-ended questions
(Maras et al., 2014)
Boucher and Bowler (2008)
Individuals with autism often have strong factual and detail-oriented memory (sometimes referred to as enhanced perceptual or rote memory), which could contribute positively to eyewitness testimony
