memory - eyewitness testimony

Question 1

what is a cognitive interview?

Answer 1

The cognitive interview (CI) is a questioning technique used by the police to enhance retrieval of information about a crime scene from the eyewitnesses and victim’s memory.

Geiselman et al. (1985) developed the Cognitive Interview (CI) as an alternative to the Standard Interview. It takes into account psychological findings about cue-dependent forgetting and has four stages designed to stimulate as many cues as possible in order to maximise different retrieval routes.

Question 2

what are the parts of the cognitive interview?

Answer 2

• REINSTATE THE CONTEXT
  (recreate conditions to provide cues, e.g. bring back to crime scene)
• CHANGE THE SEQUENCE
  (witness asked to record what they know in different list to make sure nothing is left out)
• CHANGE THE PERSPECTIVE
  (witnesses asked to tell the event from someone else’s perspective so no extra details missed)
• REPORT EVERYTHING
  (witness will recall everything, even insignificant things)

Question 3

evaluate cognitive interview - decreases accuracy

Answer 3

Koehnken et al. (1999) found that witnesses recalled more incorrect information when interviewed with the cognitive interview compared to the standard interview technique, perhaps because more detailed recall increases the chances of making mistakes.

Question 4

evaluate cognitive interview - training

Answer 4

A strength of the cognitive interview is that it can be conducted with little training. This means that more officers/investigators are able to use this technique, which could result in much more information being recalled by witnesses in many different cases.

Question 5

evaluate cognitive interview - recall vs recognition

Answer 5

A weakness of the cognitive interview is that it increases a witness’ recall, but not their recognition. This means that the ability to identify the culprit from pictures/ a line up is not improved by the cognitive interview.
This is a weakness as the point of the cognitive interview is to solve a crime, which usually involves identifying a criminal. If this ability can not be improved, the usefulness of the cognitive interview is decreased.

Question 6

Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Answer 6

Leading questions, anxiety

Question 7

Describe the experiment into leading questions

Answer 7

Loftus and Palmer
45 participants shown same clip
‘How fast were the cars going when they -
contacted?
bumped?
collided?
hit?
smashed?’
Least intense verb had least speeds, most intense verb (smashed) had highest speeds.
Supports claim that leading questions affects eyewitness testimony.

Question 8

Who came up with the ‘inverted U ‘ hypothesis for anxiety in eyewitness testimony?

Answer 8

Deffenbacher

Question 9

Evaluate the inverted U hypothesis of effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony - Loftus

Answer 9

Loftus found that when an incident involves a weapon, witnesses will often focus on the weapon over all other details such as the perpetrator’s face, clothes, voice, etc. This ‘weapons effect’ supports the hypothesis that very high levels of anxiety reduce the accuracy and detail of eyewitness testimony.

Question 10

Evaluate the inverted U hypothesis of anxiety in eyewitness testimony - Deffenbacher

Answer 10

Deffenbacher conducted
a meta-analysis and found high levels of stress negatively affect eyewitness testimony, further supporting the inverted-U hypothesis.