Psychology-Memory

Question 1

What is capacity?

Answer 1

How much data can be held in a memory store

Question 2

What is encoding?

Answer 2

The form in which information is stored in

Question 3

What is duration?

Answer 3

How long an item can be stored in one store?

Question 4

Who conducted the study for capacity in short term memory?

Answer 4

Miller

Question 5

Outline Millers Study

Answer 5

People are shown different numbers, words or amounts of dots on a screen and are then asked to recall what they saw to test their short term memory

Question 6

What were the results of Millers study?

Answer 6

Miller found that 7 (+or-2) was the ‘magic number’, most people could remember about 7 words, numbers or dots

Question 7

What conclusion can then be made for short term memory capacity?

Answer 7

Short term memory only has a limited capacity as only seven items can be remembered

Question 8

Who conducted the study for encoding in short term memory?

Answer 8

Conrad

Question 9

Outline the procedure of Conrad’s study?

Answer 9

Participants were presented with sequences of six consonants and then asked to recall the sequences

Question 10

What were the results of Conrad’s study?

Answer 10

Letters with similar sounds (D, P, T) are more difficult to recall than letters with different sounds, even if they look similar

Question 11

What was the conclusion for short term memory encoding?

Answer 11

Short term memory is encoded acoustically (by sound)

Question 12

Who backs up Conrad’s study?

Answer 12

Baddeley

Question 13

Outline Baddeley’s procedure?

Answer 13

He showed people are series of words which looked similar but were semantically (meaning of word) different. Then they were shown semantically similar words that were acoustically different

Question 14

What were the results of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 14

Participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in short term memory but not in long term memory

Question 15

What was Baddeley’s conclusion?

Answer 15

Short term memory is largely encoded acoustically whereas long term memory is largely encoded semantically

Question 16

Who conducted the study for short term memory duration?

Answer 16

Peterson and Peterson

Question 17

Outline the procedure of Peterson and Peterson’s study

Answer 17

Participants were shown 3 letters or numbers (items) and told to count backwards in 3’s to stop rehearsal of the 3 items. First they were asked to recall after three seconds, then it was repeated for 6 seconds, 12, seconds, 15 and 18 seconds with different items each time

Question 18

What were the results of Peterson and Peterson’s study?

Answer 18

After 3 seconds, 80% of people remembered. After 18 seconds, less than 10% remembered. Recall decreases between 3 and 18 seconds

Question 19

What was the conclusion of Peterson and Peterson’s study?

Answer 19

The duration of short term memory is not much more than 18 seconds

Question 20

Who studied the duration of long term memory?

Answer 20

Bahrick et al

Question 21

Outline the procedure of Bahrick et al’s study?

Answer 21

Participants were 392 American ex-high school students ages 17-74 and were either asked to: free recall of the names of as many of their former classmates as possible, a photo recognition test where they were asked to identify former classmates in a set of 50 photos where only some where classmates, and a name recognition test

Question 22

What were the results of Bahrick et al’s study?

Answer 22

90% accuracy in face and name recognition after 34 years. 80% accuracy for name recognition after 48 years. 40% accuracy for face recognition after 48 years. 60% accuracy for free recall after 15 years. 30% accuracy for free recall after 30 years

Question 23

What was the conclusion of Bahrick et al’s study?

Answer 23

Recognition was better than recall, classmates were rarely forgotten but cues were sometimes needed. Long term memory duration is infinite

Question 24

Who developed the multistore model of memory?

Answer 24

Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968

Question 25

What is the first stage of the multistore model?

Answer 25

Anything that hits our senses enters the sensory memory

Question 26

What is the second stage of the multistore model?

Answer 26

Only information that we pay attention to goes into the short term memory

Question 27

What are the characteristics of the short term memory?

Answer 27

Capacity of 7 +/-2, encoding is acoustic and duration is limited

Question 28

What is the third stage of the multistore model?

Answer 28

Items that are rehearsed over and over again can then enter the long term memory, old information can be kept in short term memory using maintenance rehearsal and then is moved

Question 29

What are the characteristics of the long term memory?

Answer 29

Capacity is unlimited, encoding is semantic and duration is unlimited

Question 30

What is the first assumption?

Answer 30

Long term memory and short term memory are separate stores which is shown because one store can be damaged whilst the other can still function

Question 31

What is the second assumption?

Answer 31

It is a linear process so information MUST be processed through each stage before it gets into the long term memory-information can’t jump straight to the long term memory from sensing it

Question 32

How does brain imaging support the multi-store model?

Answer 32

Shows there are separate stores and brain imaging shows that different parts of the brain light up when recalling different things. E.g. Beardsley found the prefrontal cortex is engaged with STM and Squire found the hippocampus is used with LTM

Question 33

How have more recent models of memory criticised the simplicity of the model and developed it further?

Answer 33

The working memory model shows how short term memory can be subdivided itself into separate stores and the same can be said for long term memory

Question 34

What is the problem with accepting data from case studies of brain damaged patients and what does this mean for the model?

Answer 34

Case studies can be one off situations which don’t represent the truth for everyone but case studies are one of the only ways to support the model as it cant easily be tested in an experiment without causing brain damage to patients which is highly unethical

Question 35

Who created the working memory model?

Answer 35

Baddeley and Hitch

Question 36

What are the four components of the working memory model?

Answer 36

The central executive, and the three slace systems- phonological store, visuo-spatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer

Question 37

Why did Baddeley and Hitch think there were more than just one memory store?

Answer 37

Dual task performance with similar tasks (eg two visual tasks) are performed less well than if done separately, but with different tasks (eg visual and sound) there is no interference, so there is a different store for eg visual and auditory processing

Question 38

What is the central executive?

Answer 38

Directs attention to particular tasks and determines how the brains ‘resources’ (three slave systems) are allocated to tasks. The data arrives from senses or long term memory, and it has a very limited capacity

Question 39

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 39

Deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information, it also has a limited capacity

Question 40

How did Baddeley 1986 further subdivide the phonological loop?

Answer 40

Phonological store which holds words you hear (like an inner ear), and an articulatory process, which is used for words heard or seen (silently repeated like an inner voice which is a form of maintenance rehearsal)

Question 41

What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 41

Used when planning spatial tasks eg counting windows of your house. Visual/spatial information is temporarily stored here. Visual information is what things look like, and spatial information is the physical relationship between things

Question 42

How did Logie 1995 further subdivide the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 42

Visual cache which stores information about visual items eg form and colour, and an inner scribe which stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 43

What is the episodic buffer?

Answer 43

Added by Baddeley in 2000 as he realised the need for a general store as the others are specific or have no storage capacity. No where for both visual and acoustic info. It is an extra storage system that has limited capacity and integrates info from all other parts of the model and maintains a sense of time sequencing, then sends information to long term memory

Question 44

What are the strengths of the working memory model?

Answer 44

Dual task performance, and evidence from brain damaged patients

Question 45

How is dual task performance an advantage of the working memory model?

Answer 45

Its the reason the model was created, and study by Baddeley and Hitch 1976 where task 1 used central executive (statement ‘b is followed by a’ then shown ‘AB’ and asked true or false) and task 2 either involved articulatory loop (eg repeat the word ‘the’) or both the central executive and articulatory loop (saying random digits) and found task 1 was slower when task 2 involved both, demonstrating the central executive is a component of the working memory

Question 46

How does evidence from brain damaged patients support the working memory model?

Answer 46

KF had short term forgetting of auditory information not as bad with visual stimuli and had problem remembering verbal material like letters than meaningful sounds like a phone ringing, shows damage to phonological loop. SC had good learning abilities but couldn’t learn word pairs presented out loud showing damage to phonological loop. LH after road accident was better at spatial tasks than one with visual imagery, showing damage to visuo-spatial sketchpad

Question 47

What are the disadvantages of the working memory model?

Answer 47

The central executive and evidence from brain damaged patients

Question 48

How is the central executive a disadvantage of the working memory model?

Answer 48

Some psychologists believe that it is too vague and doesn’t really explain anything and also many believe there is more than just one (Eslinger and Damasio) and it is probably more complex than it is currently represented

Question 49

How is evidence from brain damaged patients a disadvantage of the working memory model?

Answer 49

The process of brain injury is traumatic which may in itself change behaviour so that a person performs worse on certain tasks. Second, such individuals may have other difficulties paying attention and therefore underperform on certain tasks

Question 50

What two main types of long term memory are there?

Answer 50

Explicit (declarative-knowing that) and implicit (procedural-knowing how)

Question 51

What are the types of explicit memory?

Answer 51

Episodic and semantic

Question 52

What is episodic memory?

Answer 52

Concerned with personal experience, eg recollection of first day at school, family holidays etc where the time places and people involved are remembered. Context surrounding the ‘episode’ may also be remembered, eg what happened just before/after/why. Emotions felt may also be remembered. Three elements of episodic memory=specific event details, context and emotion

Question 53

What is semantic memory?

Answer 53

Knowledge about the world which is shared by everyone rather than personal knowledge. Relate also to things such as functions of objects, appropriate behaviour, social customs and abstract concepts eg maths/language. Generally start as episodic memory-knowledge gained due to personal experiences, then it gradually transitions to semantic memory, sometimes people can still remember where they learnt a particular fact

Question 54

What is procedural memory ?

Answer 54

Skills, eg how to tie a shoelace/reading/bike riding. Remembering how to do something rather than knowing rules of what to do. Procedural memory usually acquired by practice and repetition until they become automatic and overthinking them can stop you acting them out as attention stops the well learnt, automatic performance. Have to be automatic so focus can be on other tasks while performing everyday skills

Question 55

What are the evaluation points for types of long term memory?

Answer 55

Evidence from brain scams, distinguishing procedural and declarative memories and distinguishing episodic and semantic memories

Question 56

Why is evidence from brain scans an evaluation point for types of long term memory?

Answer 56

Brain scans show different parts of brain are active when the different types of memory are active (episodic=hippocampus and other parts of temporal lobe and frontal lobe, semantic=temporal lobe, procedural=cerebellum, motor cortex, basal ganglia and limbic system)

Question 57

Why is distinguishing procedural and declarative memories an evaluation point for types of long term memory?

Answer 57

Case study of HM-his ability to form new LTMs was affected due to damage to hippocampus but he retained his pre-existing LTMs. After surgery he could still form new procedural memories but not semantic or semantic memories. Eg he learnt mirror drawing (procedural) but couldn’t remember how he learnt it (episodic/semantic)

Question 58

Why is distinguishing episodic and semantic memories an evaluation point for types of long term memory?

Answer 58

Do semantic memories rely on episodic memories or can they be formed independently. Some Alzheimer patients retained ability to form new episodic memory but not semantic memory. This is a single dissociation but alone is not sufficient evidence that the two are distinct, so double dissociations are looked for eg some Alzheimer patients that have the reverse, suggesting episodic memory may be a gateway to semantic memory, but semantic memory can be formed separately

Question 59

What are the explanations for forgetting?

Answer 59

Interference and retrieval failure

Question 60

What is the definition of interference?

Answer 60

An explanation for forgetting in terms of one memory disrupting the ability to recall another. This is most likely to occur when two memories have some similarity

Question 61

What are the types of interference?

Answer 61

Retroactive interference and proactive interference

Question 62

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 62

Current attempts to learn something interfere with past learning, discovered first by Müller and Pilzecker, giving participants nonsense syllables to learn for six minutes, then after retention interval, asked participants to recall lists. Performance less good if participants given an intervening task between initial learning and recall. Intervening task produced RI as later task interfered with what had previously been learned

Question 63

What is proactive interference?

Answer 63

Past learning interferes with current attempts to learn something. Underwood showed it could be equally significant. He analysed findings from studies and concluded that when participants had to learn series of word lists, they don’t learn the words encountered later on in the sequence as well as lists of words encountered earlier on. Overall he found that if participants memorised 10 or more lists, then, after 24 hours, they remembered 20% of what they learned. If they only learned one list recall was over 70%

Question 64

What study was conducted by McGeoch and McDonald?

Answer 64

Experimented with the effects of similarity of materials. They gave participants a list of 10 adjectives. Once these were learned there was then a resting interval of 10 minutes during which they learned a second list followed by recall. If second list was synonyms of first list, recall was poor, if second list was nonsense syllables then it had less effect. Shows interference is strongest the more similar the items are (decay cannot explain this)

Question 65

What is a real world study linked to interference?

Answer 65

Baddeley and Hitch-investigated interference effects in rugby players recalling names of teams they’d played over a season. Some players played in all games while others missed some. Time interval from start to end of season was same for all players but number of intervening games differed. If decay was right then players should recall similar amounts, however if interference was correct, those who played more games should forget proportionately more which was what was found

Question 66

What are the evaluation points for interference?

Answer 66

Research is quite artificial (lab based word list tests-don’t relate easily to real life memory and motivation to remember may be lacking), interference only explains some situations of forgetting (Interference effects occur in everyday life but rarely as too memories have to be quite similar-Anderson), real world application to advertising (Danaher et al-recall/recognition of advertisers message was impaired when participants exposed to two adverts for competing brands within a week-can help advertisers to time adverts more successfully), individual differences (Evidence some people are less affected by proactive interference than others-Kane and Engle-those with a greater working memory span were less susceptible to proactive interference)

Question 67

What is retrieval failure?

Answer 67

Occurs due to absence of cues as retrieval depends on using cues. It is an explanation for forgetting based on the idea that the issue relates to being able to retrieve a memory that is available but not accessible

Question 68

What are three important features of retrieval failure theory?

Answer 68

The encoding specificity principle, context dependent forgetting and state dependent forgetting

Question 69

What is the encoding specificity principle?

Answer 69

Memory is most effective if information is available at encoding and retrieval. The cue doesn’t have to be exactly right but the closer it is to the original item, the more useful

Question 70

What is a research example of encoding specificity?

Answer 70

Tulving and Pearlstone 1966-demonstrated values of retrieval cues. Participants had to learn 48 words belonging to 12 categories. Participants either had to use free recall or were given cues in the form of categories. Free recall was 40% and cues were 60% recall

Question 71

What is context dependent forgetting?

Answer 71

Remembering something when you go back to a familiar environment where it was learnt

Question 72

What is a research example for context dependent forgetting?

Answer 72

Godden and Baddeley demonstrated effect of contextual cues. Scuba divers learnt words on land or under water and then were tested on land or underwater (four conditions). The results supported contextual cues as those that learnt the words and and were tested on the words in the same place, recalled more

Question 73

What is state dependent forgetting?

Answer 73

The mental state you are in at the time of learning can also act as a cue

Question 74

What is a research example of state dependent forgetting?

Answer 74

Males asked to learn words drunk or sober. After 24 hours they were asked to recall them either drunk or sober (four conditions) and those that learnt the words and and were tested on the words in the same state, recalled more

Question 75

What are the evaluation points for retrieval failure?

Answer 75

Lot of research support in different settings and can be relevant to everyday memory experiences, real world application eg for revising for exams, retrieval cues don’t always work (eg the experiments were learning word lists but normal learning is complex associations that are less easily triggered by simple cues), and the danger of circularity (Nairne-encoding and retrieval are correlation not cause, and Baddeley said encoding specificity is impossible to test as it is circular)

Question 76

What are two examples of misleading information?

Answer 76

Leading questions and post event discussion

Question 77

Who conducted the key study into leading questions?

Answer 77

Loftus and Palmer 1974

Question 78

What was the procedure for Loftus and Palmers experiment 1?

Answer 78

45 students shown seven films of different traffic accidents, and after each one were given a questionnaire asking them to describe the accident and answer a series of specific questions about it. The critical question was ‘about how fast were the cars going when they [varying verb] each other?’ The verbs were smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted. This was the leading question as it suggests the answer that a participant might give

Question 79

What were the results of experiment 1?

Answer 79

The mean estimate speeds were: smashed=40.8, collided=39.3, bumped=38.1, hit=34.0, contacted=31.8

Question 80

What was the procedure for Loftus and Palmers experiment 2?

Answer 80

Wanted to test leading question bias causing information to be altered before it is stored. Participants were divided into three groups and shown a film of a car accident that lasted 1 minute and were then asked questions about speed. Then after a week they were asked 10 questions including the critical question, ‘Did you see any broken glass’ though there was none in the film

Question 81

What were the results of experiment 2?

Answer 81

Smashed=16 said yes, 34 said no, Hit=7 said yes, 43 said no, Control=6 said yes, 44 said no. Shows that leading questions did change the actual memory that a participant had for an event

Question 82

What are two parts of post event discussion that can create misleading information?

Answer 82

Conformity effect and repeat interviewing

Question 83

What is the conformity effect?

Answer 83

Co-witnesses may reach a consensus view of what happened, investigated by Gabbert. Participants in pairs watched different videos of the same event then in one condition, discussed the event before individually recalling it. 71% then went on to mistakenly recall items

Question 84

What is repeat interviewing?

Answer 84

Each time an eyewitness is interviewed, there is the possibility that comments from the interviewer will become incorporated into their recollection of events. Interviewers may also use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events, especially true when children are being interviewed (LaRooy et al)

Question 85

What are the evaluation points for misleading information?

Answer 85

Supporting evidence (Disney advertisements with misleading information on Ariel/Bugs Bunny), EWT in real life (evidence that misleading information has less influence in real life situations), Real life applications (research warns criminal justice system-DNA now used as confirmation), Individual differences (Age-elderly often forget source of information so more prone to effects of misleading information), May be response bias (Order of questions has significant effect-memory change due to response bias, not storage)

Question 86

What is anxiety?

Answer 86

An unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanied by increased heart rate and rapid breathing

Question 87

How can anxiety affect the accuracy of eye witness testimony?

Answer 87

It can have a negative effect on accuracy, however it can also have a positive effect on accuracy

Question 88

How can anxiety have a negative effect on accuracy?

Answer 88

Stress and anxiety have negative effects on memory as well as performance in general

Question 89

What is a key study into the negative effects of anxiety on accuracy?

Answer 89

Johnson and Scott. They focus on why anxiety reduces accuracy of eye witness testimony by looking at the weapon focus effect-the view that a weapon in a criminal’s hand distracts attention (because of the anxiety it creates) from the other features and therefore reduces the accuracy of identification

Question 90

What was the procedure for Johnson and Scott’s study?

Answer 90

To test the weapon focus effect, they asked participants to sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument in an adjoining room and saw a man run through the room carrying either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety ‘weapon focus’ condition). Participants were later asked to identify the man from a set of photographs

Question 91

What were the findings of Johnson and Scott’s study?

Answer 91

They support the weapon focus effect. Mean accuracy was 49% in identifying the man in the pen condition, compared with 33% accuracy in the knife condition

Question 92

What does Loftus et al add to the findings of Johnson and Scott’s study?

Answer 92

Showed that anxiety does focus attention on central features in crime, eg the weapon. The researchers monitored eyewitnesses’ eye movements and found that the presence of a weapon caused attention to be physically drawn towards the weapon itself and away from other things such as the person’s face

Question 93

What is the argument that anxiety has a positive effect on accuracy?

Answer 93

There is an alternative argument that says high anxiety/arousal creates more enduring and accurate memories. For example, there is an evolutionary argument that suggests it would be adaptive to remember events that are emotionally important so that you could identify similar situations in the future and recall how to respond-such as what you did last time you escaped from a lion

Question 94

What research is there into anxiety’s positive effects on accuracy?

Answer 94

Christianson and Hubinette found evidence of enhanced recall when they questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden, The witnesses were either victims (bank teller) or bystanders (employee or customer) i.e. high or low anxiety. The interviews were conducted 4-15 months after the robberies

Question 95

What were the results of Christianson and Hubinette’s study?

Answer 95

The researchers found that all witnesses showed generally good memories for details of the robbery itself (better than 75% accurate recall). Those witnesses who were most anxious (the victims) had the best recall at all. This study generally shows that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall, and in a review of research, Christianson concluded that memory for negative emotional events is better than for neutral events, at least for the central details

Question 96

How is the contradiction of research proving both positive and negative effects of anxiety resolved?

Answer 96

Deffenbacher reviewed 21 studies of the effects of anxiety on eyewitness memory. He found that 10 of these studies had results that linked higher anxiety to increased accuracy while 11 showed the opposite. He suggested that the Yerkes-Dodson effect can account for this apparent inconsistency. According to this principle, there would be occasions where anxiety is only moderate and then eyewitness accuracy would be enhanced. When anxiety is too extreme then accuracy will be reduced

Question 97

What are the evaluation points for anxiety and the accuracy of eyewitness testimony?

Answer 97

Weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety, real life versus lab studies, no simple conclusion, individual differences, and an alternative model

Question 98

Explain the evaluation point ‘weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety’ for anxiety’s effect on the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 98

Pickel proposed that the reduced accuracy of identification due to the weapon focus effect could be due to surprise rather than anxiety. To test this she arranged participants to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying scissors (high threat, low surprise) a handgun (high threat, high surprise) or a whole raw chicken (low threat, low surprise). Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than high threat, supporting view that weapon focus effect is related to surprise rather than anxiety

Question 99

Explain the evaluation point ‘real life versus lab studies’ for anxiety’s effect on the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 99

One of the strengths of the study by Christianson and Hubinette was that it was a study of anxiety in the context of real crime. It may be the case that lab studies do not create the real levels of anxiety experienced by a real eyewitness during actual crime. Deffenbacher et al agree with this but found, from a review of 34 studies that lab studies generally demonstrate that anxiety leads to reduced accuracy and real life studies lead to an even greater loss in accuracy, which is at odds with the result from Christianson and Hubinette-Fazey and Hardy’s model offers a way to accommodate this

Question 100

Explain the evaluation point ‘no simple conclusion’ for anxiety’s effect on the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 100

The study by Christianson and Hubinette concerned a violent real-life crime. Many other studies of anxiety and accuracy of identification, even the real-life ones, did not involve violence. Like Christianson and Hubinette, Halford and Milne found that victims of violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene information than victims of non-violent crimes. This shows there is no simple rule about the effect of anxiety on accuracy and eye witness testimony

Question 101

Explain the evaluation point ‘individual differences’ for anxiety’s effect on the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 101

It’s been suggested that a key extraneous variable in anxiety studies is emotional sensitivity. Bothwell et al showed that more emotionally stable people showed rising levels of accuracy as stress increased but the opposite for neurotics (who become anxious quickly). Deffenbacher et al point out that the modest effect sizes shown in many studies of anxiety may be the result of averaging out low accuracy and high accuracy scores of sensitive and non-sensitive participants

Question 102

Explain the evaluation point ‘an alternative model’ for anxiety’s effect on the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 102

Fazey and Hardy suggested a more complex relationship between anxiety and performance than the Yerkes-Dodson model. Their catastrophe theory predicts that when physiological arousal increases beyond the optimum level, the inverted-U hypothesis predicts a gradual decrease in performance. However, they observed that there is sometimes a catastrophic decline, which they suggest is due to increased mental anxiety (worry)-the inverted-U only describes increases in physiological anxiety. Daffenbacher et al believe this offers a better fit with research findings

Question 103

How can the accuracy of eye witness testimony be improved?

Answer 103

By using the cognitive interview

Question 104

What were the two main influences behind the development of the cognitive interview?

Answer 104

The need to improve the effectiveness of police interviewers when questioning witnesses, and to apply the results of psychological research to this area, especially the work of Loftus whose research already dispelled the myth that eyewitness memory operates like a video camera

Question 105

Who developed the cognitive interview?

Answer 105

Geiselman et al developed the interviewing technique, which was based on proven psychological principles concerning effective memory recall. The original cognitive interview technique is categorised by four distinct components

Question 106

What are the four parts of the cognitive interview?

Answer 106

Mental reinstatement of original context, report everything, change order, and change perspective

Question 107

What is mental reinstatement of original context in the cognitive interview?

Answer 107

Where the interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate both the physical and psychological environment of the original incident. The aim is to make memories accessible. People often cannot access memories that are there. They need appropriate contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories

Question 108

What is the ‘report everything’ component of cognitive interview?

Answer 108

The interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything out even if it seems irrelevant. Memories are interconnected with one another so that recollection of one item may then cue a whole lot of other memories. In addition the recollection of small details may eventually be pieced together from many different witnesses to form a clearer picture of the event

Question 109

What is the ‘change order’ component of cognitive interview?

Answer 109

The interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident, eg by reversing the order in which the events occurred. The rationale behind this is that out recollections are influenced by schemas. Eg if you think about when you went to a restaurant a few weeks ago your recollection will be influenced by your general expectations of what is likely to happen at a restaurant If you have to recall events starting from the end of the event backwards this prevents schemas influencing recall

Question 110

What is the ‘change perspective’ component of cognitive interview?

Answer 110

The interviewee is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives, eg by imagining how it would have appeared to other witnesses present at the time. Agains this is done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall. This approach was suggested by the research by Anderson and Pichert

Question 111

What are the evaluation points for the cognitive interview?

Answer 111

Research into the effectiveness of the cognitive interview, quantity versus quality, problems with using it in practices, difficulties in establishing effectiveness, and individual differences

Question 112

Explain the evaluation point ‘research into the effectiveness’ for the cognitive interview

Answer 112

Meta-analysis of 53 studies found on average an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the cognitive interview compared with standard interviewing techniques (Köhnken et al) although most studies involved volunteer witnesses in a lab (may not reflect real world). However effectiveness of CI may be due to individual elements rather than the whole thing. Milne and Bull interviewed undergrad students and children using one component of CI and compared with control condition. Each component had similar recall to each other and with control group but were significantly higher using a mix of report everything and mental reinstatement

Question 113

Explain the evaluation point ‘quantity versus quality’ for the cognitive interview

Answer 113

The procedure is designed to enhance the quantity of correct recall without compromising quality of information. However, it may be that effectiveness has largely been in terms of quantity. Köhnken et al found 81% increase of correct information but also 61% increase of incorrect information (false positives) when the enhanced CI was compared to standard interview. This means that police need to treat all information collected from CI with caution as it doesn’t guarantee accuracy

Question 114

Explain the evaluation point ‘problems with using it in practice’ for the cognitive interview

Answer 114

From the interviews with police, Kebbell and Wagstaff report a problem with the CI in practice. Police officers suggest that this technique requires more time than is often available and that instead they prefer to use deliberate strategies aimed to limit an eyewitness’ report to the minimum amount of information that the officers feel is necessary. In addition, CI requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours. For these reasons, the use of CI has not been widespread

Question 115

Explain the evaluation point ‘difficulties in establishing effectiveness’ for the cognitive interview

Answer 115

One problem with evaluating effectiveness of CI when it is used in the real world is that it is not really just one ‘procedure’, but a collection of related techniques. Eg the Thames Valley Police use a version that does not include the ‘changing perspectives’ component. Other police forces that describe themselves as using the CI technique have a tended to use only the ‘reinstate context’ and ‘report everything’ components (Kebbell and Wagstaff)

Question 116

Explain the evaluation point ‘individual differences’ for the cognitive interview

Answer 116

The CI may be particularly useful when interviewing older witnesses. Negative stereotypes about older adults’ memory can make such witnesses overly cautious about reporting information. However, the CI, because it stresses the importance of reporting any detail regardless of its perceived insignificance, may overcome such difficulties. Mello and Fisher compared older and younger adults’ memory of a filmed simulated crime using either a CI or a standard police interview. The CI produced more information than the standard interview but significantly, the advantage of the CI over the SI was greater for the older than the young participants