Interviewing witnesses Flashcards
What is eyewitness testimony? (1)
The evidence given by witnesses to a
crime typically in the form of a verbal
account or person identification
What are episodic memories? (2)
Memories for personally
experienced events
Contains details of what, when, and where something happened
Why is research on human memory important for the law? (3)
Memory needs to be accurate
Eyewitness evidence is perceived by
jurors to be compelling
Eyewitness misidentification is the
leading cause of wrongful conviction
Post-conviction DNA exoneration
cases in US (3)
Many of these served time on
death row
Fourteen years – average
length of time served
Eyewitness misidentification is a
factor in around 70% of cases
(the biggest single cause)
What are the three stages in which memory processing occurs? (3)
Stage 1 - acquisition/encoding
Stage 2 - storage/retention
Stage 3 - Retrieval
What is acquisition/encoding and why is it important? (3)
Information the person perceives
What is encoded (learned) is critical because it forms the basis for what is stored and eventually
retrieved
What are the factors that can affect the quality of information that is encoded in a crime situation? (5)
Exposure duration
Crime seriousness
Violence
Weapon presence
Perpetrator characteristics e.g. Disguises
What is bottom-up processing? (3)
Processing that is determined
directly by the environmental
stimuli rather than by the
individual’s knowledge and
experience
Data driven
What is top-down processing? (2)
Stimulus processing that is
determined by expectations,
memory and knowledge
rather than directly by the
stimulus
What is perceptual set? (2)
Use past experiences and environmental context to perceive stimuli in a certain way
Cues can ‘set’ the individual to interpret impoverished information in a certain way
What are schemas? (3)
A mental framework or body of knowledge that helps us to make sense of familiar situations
They guide our expectations and provide a framework within which new information is processed and organised
What do we have schemas for? (4)
Specific people (e.g., one’s best friend)
Groups of people (e.g., traffic wardens)
Roles (e.g., how you should behave at the theatre)
Places and objects
What are ‘scripts’? (3)
Common schemas for events e.g. how to order food in a restaurant
Can have schemas for events never witnessed e.g. what a typical robbery would involve
What is the schema theory? (2)
Suggests that we
remember items better if
they fit in with our schema
and previous experiences
What are the factors that can affect encoding? (4)
Things that we already know, believe or expect
Situational influences
Other cognitive factors, such as attention
What is storage/retention? (1)
Information a person stores in memory
Who created the forgetting curve in 1885? (1)
Ebbinghaus
What does the Ebbinghaus (1885) forgetting curve show? (1)
The curve shows an
inverse relationship
between memory and the
retention interval
What is encoding specificity? (3)
The link between encoding and retrieval
Only aspects of our
experience which are
specifically attended to
during the study situation
are certain to be encoded
Memory is enhanced when
conditions present during
retrieval match those that
were present during
encoding
What did Tulving, 1979 suggest about encoding specificity (1)
What is remembered later
depends on the similarity of the
retrieval situation to the original
encoding conditions
When does retrieval of failure occur? (2)
The memory trace is no longer
stored in memory
The memory trace is stored in
memory, but cannot be accessed
What are the two different types of retrieval? (2)
Recall
Recognition
What is recall? (2)
A person brings to mind information in response to a cue.
The cue may be non-specific or specifi
What is recognition? (1)
When participants must judge whether the information
presented to them has been previously encountered
Why do participants recognise
information better than they recall it? (1)
Recognition provides
more relevant cues to retrieval
Does eyewitness memory involve recalling or recognition? (1)
Recalling
What are the non-optimal interviewing strategies identified in analysis of police interviews? (6)
Frequently interrupting the witness’s narrative
Over-talking on the part of the police officer
Excessive use of closed questions – short answers
Use of leading or suggestive questions
Rarely using open questions
Inappropriate timing and sequencing of questions
How do the non-optimal interviewing strategies lead to less accurate recall? (4)
Questioning styles interrupt witness concentration
Discourage elaboration
Restrict the witness to reporting requested information only
Encourage the use of ineffective and superficial retrieval attempts
What did Wright & Alison (2004) investigate? (1)
Confirmation bias
Analysed a sample of interviews given by the Canadian Police
What did Wright & Alison (2004) find about confirmation bias? (5)
Interviews predominantly began with
closed questions (which, who, when,
where)
Followed by abrupt, rapid-fire yes/no
questions
Police officers may have preconceived beliefs concerning the event
An investigator may direct the witness to focus on aspects of the event which they believe are relevant
Yes/no questions are used to seek
confirmation of a particular account
What are the 4 principles of the cognitive interview? (4)
Mental context reinstatement
Report everything
Reverse order
Change perspective
What is mental context reinstatement in the cognitive interview? (3)
The witness is encouraged to recall
the context in which they saw the
event including the sights and
sounds at the time of the event,
how they were feeling and what
they were thinking at the time of
the incident
Aim of mental context reinstatement (1)
Aims to increase the number of
retrieval cues by reinstating the
psychological context in which the
event was encoded
What is report everything in the cognitive interview? (3)
The witness is allowed to engage in free recall without interruption from the police interviewer
The witness may be asked to remember everything they possibly can, no matter how small a detail seems to be
Aim of report everything (2)
To increase the number of retrieval cues elicited by the witness by reinstating the psychological context in which the event was encoded
This instruction ensures the witness’s
chain of thought is not interrupted
What is reverse order in the cognitive interview? (3)
The witness is encouraged to begin
their description of an event from
different starting points e.g., starting
at the end and working backwards
The different orders may activate
different cues and hence lead to
more details being recalled
Aim of reverse order (1)
To circumvent the “filling in” of
information using scripts
What is change perspective in the cognitive interview? (3)
Witnesses are encouraged to try to
give an account of the event from
the point of view of another person,
such as another witness
This instruction is not always used
by the police as the information
obtained may be construed as
“hearsay”
Aim of change perspective (2)
To increase the number of
retrieval cues available to tap into
the memory of the event and avoid
filling in gaps
Which researchers investigated effectiveness of the cognitive interview? (4)
Geiselman et al. (1984)
Köhnken et al., (1999) - meta-analysis
Memon et al. (2010) - meta-analysis
Mosser & Evans (2019)
What did Geiselman et al. (1984) do and find about the effectiveness of the cognitive interview (CI)? (3)
16 participants saw a staged event during lecture
CI group produced more correct
information after 48 hours
No difference in amount of incorrect
information (though meta-analysis by
Köhnken et al., (1999) did not support
this)
What did Memon et al. (2010) find about the effectiveness of the cognitive interview (CI)? (1)
Confirmed Köhnken et al.’s
findings
What did Mosser & Evans (2019) find about the effectiveness of the cognitive interview (CI)? (2)
Found the CI elicited more information during contact
tracing compared to a standard
interview, but not when illness was
simulated
What are the additional techniques of the cognitive interview? (2)
Open-depth
Re-enactment
What is open-depth in the CI? (4)
Encourages a further round of recall
Uses instructions to focus explicitly on all ‘the little details’ not able to be
reported first time
Open Depth yielded more correct
information, with lots of surrounding
details that are typically not reported
by witnesses, outperformed both
change perspective and motivated
recall
What is re-enactment in the CI? (2)
Focus on actions and accessing
verbatim memories (not gist), these
are less susceptible to influence from
schemas
Reported more correct information
and more action details
What does the standard CI focus on? (1)
On using knowledge of how memory works to aid the retrieval process
What factors can affect retrieval in an interview situation? (2)
Social dynamics
Communication
What does the enhanced CI focus on? (2)
Has evolved to incorporate communication and
cognitive techniques which work in
tandem
e.g., Establish rapport, transfer
control of interview to witness,
enhancing the listening skills of
interviewer, reduce intimidation
Does the enhanced CI improve witness recall? (3)
Fisher, Geiselman & Amador (1989) - found ECI elicited 47% more information with high
corroboration rates
Meta-analysis of CI/ECI performance
in laboratory studies shows overall
increase in correct details compared
to a standard interview
Crossland et al. (2020) found the ECI
beneficial with intoxicated witnesses
Why do the police not use cognitive interview? (2)
Time consuming
Difficult to explain instructions to
witnesses
