Eyewitness Memory and Interviewing Witnesses - Lecture 1

Question 1

What is eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

It is evidence given by a witness to a crime, typically in the form of a verbal account or person identification.

Question 2

What are they asked to recall?

Answer 2

Episodic memories.

Question 3

What are episodic memories?

Answer 3

These are memories for personally experienced events. Tend to retain details of time and situation in which these memories were acquired of when, where and what happened.

Question 4

Why is research on Human memory important for the law?

Answer 4

Because memory needs to be 100% accurate and eyewitness accounts are considered to be compelling by jurors. Also, eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful conviction.

Question 5

What percentage of cases does eyewitness misidentification occur in?

Answer 5

12%. There have been 325 post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in US of which 20 served time on death-row and 13.6 years was the average time served.

Question 6

Why do eyewitnesses make errors?

Answer 6

Memory processing occurs in three stages and an error can occur at any stage.

Question 7

What is the first stage of memory processing?

Answer 7

Stage 1 = Acquisition/Encoding which is the information that the person receives.

Question 8

What is stage two of memory processing?

Answer 8

Stage 2 = Storage/retention which is the information that the person stores in their memory.

Question 9

What is stage 3 of memory processing?

Answer 9

Stage 3 = Retrieval which is the information that the person retrieves later.

Question 10

Why is stage 1 so important?

Answer 10

Because it forms a basis for what is stored in memory and eventually retrieved when giving a testimony.

Question 11

Which 5 factors affect the quality of the information encoded into memory?

Answer 11

1) Exposure duration
2) Crime seriousness
3) Violence
4) Weapon presence
5) Perpetrator characteristics eg. disguises

Question 12

What is top-down, bottom-up processing?

Answer 12

Bottom-up = data driven and begins with an image that falls onto retina. Information is transmitted up to higher levels of visual systems until object is perceived. It builds from individual stimulus features to unified perception.

Top-down = Sensory information that is interpreted in light of prior knowledge, concepts and expectations.

Question 13

What is perceptual set? And who invented the concept?

Answer 13

It is the idea that cues can ‘set’ the individual to interpret impoverished info in a certain way.
It was invented by Bugelski and Alampay (1961)

Question 14

What are past experience-schemas?

Answer 14

They are a mental framework or body of knowledge that helps us make sense of familiar situations.

Question 15

What do past experience schemas do?

Answer 15

They guide our expectations and provide a framework within which new information is processed and organised.

Question 16

What are common schemas called?

Answer 16

‘Scripts’ - people can have scripts for events they have never witnessed before eg. what a robbery would involve.

Question 17

Who invented the concept of schemas?

Answer 17

Bransford and Johnson in 1972. (the washing clothes scenario)

Question 18

What is the schema theory?

Answer 18

It suggests that we remember items better if they fit in with our schema and previous experience.
NOTE: expectations and prior knowledge can lead to errors.

Question 19

What is the danger of the storage/Retention stage?

Answer 19

That we forget (over time).

Question 20

When was the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve invented?

Answer 20

1885

Question 21

What does the EFC show?

Answer 21

It shows an inverse relationship between memory and retention interval.

Question 22

What was the findings from the O.J Simpson trial? Who undertook the experiment?

Answer 22

It was done by Schmolk et al in 2000. There were three control groups: 3 days after, 15 months after and 32 months after. Reported high confidence even when they contained major distortions.

Question 23

What is the encoding specificity?

Answer 23

It is the link between encoding and retrieving.

Question 24

What does what we remember later depend upon?

Answer 24

It depends on the similarity of the retrieval situation to original encoding conditions (Tulving, 1979).

Question 25

What does learning involve?

Answer 25

Laying down a memory trace

Question 26

When does retrieval failure occur?

Answer 26

When memory trace is no longer stored in memory and when memory trace is stored in memory but cannot be accessed.

Question 27

What did Gordon and Baddeley find?

Answer 27

In 1975, they found that reinstating physical context in which participants encoded a list of words helped participants to remember.

Question 28

When is memory enhanced?

Answer 28

When the conditions present during retrieval match those that were present during encoding.

Question 29

What are the two types of retrieval?

Answer 29

Recall and Recognition

Question 30

What is recall?

Answer 30

When a person brings to mind information in response to a cue. Cue may be non-specific (free recall eg. from beginning, tell me what you saw?) or specific (cued recall eg. the hat the man was wearing, what colour was it?).

Question 31

What is recognition?

Answer 31

When participants must judge whether information presented to them has been previously encountered.

Question 32

What are the differences between two types of retrieval?

Answer 32

Participants generally recognise information better than they recall it.
Recognition provides more relevant cues to retrieval.
Eyewitness memory for events largely includes recalling information.
Witnesses might also have to attend identification parade but errors can occur (Bradfield, Wells and Olson, 2000).

Question 33

What six things were highlighted through the analysis of real police interviews (USA - Fisher et al, 1987, Fisher, 1995)?

Answer 33

Frequently interrupting witness’ narrative
Over-talking on part of police officer
Excessive use of closed and compound questions
Use of leading/suggestive questions
Rarely using open questions
Inappropriate timing and sequencing of questions.

Question 34

What do these question styles do? (analysis of real police interview)

Answer 34

They interrupt witness concentration, discourage elaboration, restrict witness to reporting requested info only, encourage use of ineffective and superficial retrieval attempts.

Question 35

What did Wright and Alison’s study, 2004 (Canada) show?

Answer 35

It showed that Canadian police officers predominantly began with closed questions (who, what, where, how), followed by an abrupt, rapid-fire yes-no questions.

Question 36

What are the problems with this? (Canadian police)

Answer 36

Police officers might already have preconceived beliefs concerning the event.
Investigator may direct witness to focus on aspects of event which they believe to be relevant.
Yes/no questions are used to seek confirmation of a particular account.

Question 37

Informing police practices. The cognitive interview. What is mental context reinstatement?

Answer 37

When a witness is encouraged to recall context in which they saw the event including sights and sounds at the time of an incident (Fisher et al, 2002). It aims to increase number of retrieval cues by reinstating psychological context in which event was encoded.

Question 38

What is report everything?

Answer 38

When the witness is allowed to engage in free recall without interruption from police interviewer. Witness may be asked to remember everything they possibly can, no matter how small a detail it seems (Goodman and Melinder, 2007) and it aims to increase the number of retrieval cues elicited by witness by reinstating psychological context in which event was encoded. This instruction ensures witness’s chain of thoughts is not interrupted.

Question 39

What is reverse order?

Answer 39

When the witness is encouraged to begin description of event from different starting points eg. starting at end and working backwards. Aims to circumvent the ‘filling in’ of information using scripts. Different orders may activate different cues and hence lead to more details being recalled.

Question 40

What is change perspectives?

Answer 40

When witnesses are encouraged to try and give account of event from point of view of someone else eg. another witness. Aims to increase number of retrieval cues available to tap into memory of event and avoid filling in gaps. This is not always used by police, as information obtained may be construed as “hearsay”.

Question 41

Who created the enhanced cognitive interview (CI)?

Answer 41

Fisher and Geiselman in 1992.

Question 42

What else can affect retrieval in an interview situation?

Answer 42

Social dynamics and communication

Question 43

What has the enhanced CI done?

Answer 43

It has evolved to incorporate communication and cognitive technique which work in tandem. Eg. establish rapport, transfer control of interview to witness, enhancing listening skills of interviewer, reduce intimidation.

Question 44

Do cognitive interviews improve witness recall (Geiselman et al 1984)?

Answer 44

16 participants saw staged event during lecture, 48 hours later were interviewed using either original CI or comparison interview. CI group produced more correct information. No difference in amount of incorrect information (meta analysis by Kohnken et al 1999 did not support this).

Question 45

Comparisons between CI and ECI.

Answer 45

Fisher, Geiselman and Amador (1989) looked at effectiveness of ECI with real witnesses. Found that ECI elicited 47% more information with high corroboration rates.
Meta-analysis of CI and ECI performance in laboratory studies shows overall increase in correct details compared to a standard interview (Kohnken, Milne, Memon, Bull, 1999)

Question 46

Do police use the CI?

Answer 46

Clarke and Milne (2001) evaluated the investigative interviewing package used in England and Wales (central planning training unit, 1992) - found little evidence of any CI taking place after training.
Alison and Wright (2004) and Dando et al (2008) both reported that some techniques were used - report everything was used sometimes, change perspective and context reinstatement very rarely. (Time consuming and difficult to explain to witnesses)