Improving Eye-witness testimony Flashcards
(7 cards)
What does Fisher & Geiselman argue about EWT?
They state that it can be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses.
What did Fisher & Geiselman recommend?
They recommended that such techniques should be based on psychological insights into how memory works, and called these techniques collectively the cognitive interview to indicate its foundation in cognitive psychology.
What is report everything?
Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of the event. Even if it may seem irreverent or the witness doesn’t feel confident about it. This is because they could be very important and they may trigger other important memories.
What is reinstate the context?
The witness should return the original crime scene ‘ in their mind’ this means imagining details about the environment i.e. what the weather was like, what they could see etc. This is all relevant to context-dependent forgetting.
What is reverse the order?
Events should be recalled in different chronological orders to the original sequences i.e. from the final point back to the beginning or the middle to the beginning. This is done to prevent people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than actual events, it also prevents dishonesty because it is harder for people to produce an untruthful account if they have to reverse it.
What is change perspective?
This is were witnesses should recall the incident from other people’s perspective e.g. how it would of appeared to other witnesses or the perpetrator. This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall. ( the scheme you have for a particular setting generate expectations of what would have happened which can impact recall).
What did Fisher et al state about the enhanced cognitive interview?
They developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the cognitive interview. For example, the interview also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions.
