Lecture 5: Eyewitness testimony and Police interviewing

Question 1

What is the encoding stage of memory?

Answer 1

When you perceive and pay attention to details in your environment.

Question 2

What is the storage stage?

Answer 2

encoded information that passes into your short term holding facility. Your short term memory has a limited capacity.

Question 3

What is the long term memory/retrieval stage

Answer 3

Your short term memories pass into your long term memories to make room for new memories. Information from your long term memory can be accessed or retrieved as needed.

Question 4

What is recall memory?

Answer 4

reporting details of a previously witnessed event or person

Question 5

What is recognition memory?

Answer 5

determining whether a previously seen item or person is the same as what is currently being viewed.

Question 6

What is an estimator variables?

Answer 6

Variables that are present at the time of the crime and that cannot be changed

Question 7

What are system variables?

Answer 7

variables that can be manipulated to increase (or decrease) eyewitness accuracy.

Question 8

What is open ended recall

Answer 8

witnesses are asked to either write or orally state all they remember about the event without the officer (or experimenter) asking questions. Also known as free narrative

Question 9

What are the three types of dependent variables in eyewitness studies?

Answer 9

1) recall of the event/crime 2) recall of the perpetrator and 3) recognition of the perpetrator

Question 10

Laboratory studies

Answer 10

Lab: Participant views critical event such as a crime through a slide sequence, a video recording or live. The participant is unaware that he/she will be questioned after. Now a witness, the participant is asked to describe what happened and the target/perpetrator involved, the witness may be asked to view a line up.

Question 11

Field studies

Answer 11

High external validity, low internal

Question 12

What is the yerkes dodson law effect?

Answer 12

eye witnesses have an optimal zone of arousal (too little arousal didn’t place any importance on it, too high stress)

Question 13

What is memory conformity?

Answer 13

when what one witness reports influences what another reports

Question 14

What is the misinformation effect?

Answer 14

Phenomenon where a witness who is presented with inaccurate information after an event will incorporate that misinformation into a subsequent recall task. Also known as the post event information effect.

Question 15

What is the misinformation acceptance hypothesis?

Answer 15

Explanation for the misinformation effect where the incorrect information is provided because the witness guesses what the officer or the experimenter wants the response to be

Question 16

what is the source misattribution hypothesis?

Answer 16

explanation for the misinformation effect where the witness has two memories, the original and the misinformation; however the witness cannot remember where each memory originated or the source of each

Question 17

What is memory impairment hypothesis?

Answer 17

explanation for the misinformation effect where the original memory is replaced with the new, incorrect information

Question 18

How could hypnosis help with memory recall?

Answer 18

it is assumed that a person under hypnosis is able to retrieve memories that are otherwise inaccesible. A hypnotized witness may be able to produce a greater number of details than a non-hypnotized witness; this phenomenon is term hypnotically refreshed memory.

Question 19

What is the cognitive interview?

Answer 19

interview procedure for use with eyewitnesses based on principles of memory storage and retrieval.

Question 20

What are the four memory retrieval techniques that are used to increase recall?

Answer 20

1) reinstating the context 2) reporting everything 3) reversing order and 4) changing perspective

Question 21

What is the enhanced cognitive interview?

Answer 21

interview procedure that includes various principles of social dynamics in addition to the memory retrieval principles used in the original cognitive interview.

Question 22

What are the additional components in the enhanced cognitive interview?

Answer 22

Rapport building: an officer should spend time building rapport with the witness and make him/her feel comfortable/supported
Supportive interviewer behaviour: a witnesses free recall should not be interrupted paused should be waited out by the officer, who should express attention to what the witness is saying
Transfer of control: the witness, not the officer should control the flow of the interview.
Focused retrieval: questions should be open ended and not leading or suggestive
Witness compatible questioning: an officers questions should match the witness’ thinking

Question 23

Suspect vs. Perpetrator

Answer 23

A suspect is a person the police suspect committed the crime, who may be guilty or innocent of the crime in question. A perpetrator is the guilty person who committed the crime

Question 24

Lineup distractors/foils

Answer 24

Lineup members who are known to be innocent of the crime in question

Question 25

Target present lineup vs. target absent lineup

Answer 25

Target present contains the perpetrator, and target absent is a lineup that does not contain the perpetrator.

Question 26

what three identification decisions can be made with a target present line up?

Answer 26

The witnesses can identify the guilty suspect, which is a correct identification. if the witness identifies a foil, the witness may also state that the perpetrator is not present which is a false rejection

Question 27

Three type of identification decisions that can occur with a target absent lineup

Answer 27

the witness can say the perpetrator is absent, which is a correct rejection, the witness can identify a foil (foil identification) or the witness can identify an innocent suspect which is a false identification

Question 28

What is the simultaneous lineup?

Answer 28

Perhaps the most common lineup, a lineup procedure that presents all lineup members at one time to the witness. this procedure encourages the witness to make relative judgement, whereby lineup members are compared with one another and the person who looks most like the perpetrator is identified

Question 29

What is the sequential lineup?

Answer 29

alternative lineup procedure where the lineup members are presented serially to the witness, and the witness must make a decision as to whether the lineup member is the perpetrator before seeing another member. Also, a witness cannot ask to see previously seen photos and is unaware of the number of photos to be shown. Witnesses may be more likely to make absolute judgement whereby each perpetrator is compared with the witnesses memory.

Question 30

What is a show up?

Answer 30

Identification procedure that shows one person to the witness: the suspect. Courts and researchers have found it to be less than ideal because witnesses may know that the police suspect this perpetrator and thus they identify them as it

Question 31

What is a walk by?

Answer 31

Identification procedure that occurs in a naturalistic environment. the police take the witnesses to a public location where the suspect is likely to be. once the suspect is in view, the witness is asked whether he or she sees the perpetrator.

Question 32

What is a bias lineup?

Answer 32

a lineup that suggests who the police suspect and thereby whom the witness should identify. Foil bias (the suspect is the only member who matches the description of the perpetrator) Clothing bias (the suspect is the only member wearing similar clothes) and instruction bias (the police fail to mention the perpetrator might not be present and imply that they are present.

Question 33

What was one of the first cases that used voice identification?

Answer 33

The charles lindbergh case

Question 34

Factors that decrease the likelihood of correct voice identification

Answer 34

if voice is changed by whispering or muffling or through emotion

Question 35

There appears to be a ________ correlation between confidence and accuracy

Answer 35

small positive

Question 36

What are the three estimator variables that have received much attention in eyewitness research

Answer 36

Age (older adults appear less likely than younger adults to correctly identify the perpetrator) , race (the cross race effect) and weapon focus (focus on weapon more than perpetrator

Question 37

What are the recommendations for a lineup?

Answer 37

Lineup members should fit the description of culprit provided by the witness
Instructions should be provided prior to the lineup that culprit may be absent
EW confidence in ID should be recorded immediately before any feedback
The officer conducting the lineup should be blind to the identity of the suspect
Provided a blind presentation is employed the sequential lineup should be used
Should be videotaped

Question 38

The standard police interview

Answer 38

The type of interview police supposedly use if they have not received interview training. The standard police interview is characterized by frequent interruptions, closed questions, inappropriate sequence of questions, negative phrasing, and leading questions. Judgemental comments (victim blaming)

Question 39

What is the purpose of a police interview?

Answer 39

Gather accurate information
Gather detailed information
Gather complete information

Question 40

What is the encoding specificity principle?

Answer 40

A retrieval cue is effective to the extent that sufficient overlap exists between the encoded information and the retrieval cues. Ex. Making study conditions as similar as possible to test conditions. Scuba study

Question 41

What is the schema theory?

Answer 41

Events are associated with schemas (cognitive structures representing knowledge about a concept) that are generated by experiences and this guides the encoding and retrieval of events. If they’re are gaps in your memory, you will typically fill those gaps with schemas.

Question 42

Does the original cognitive interview work?

Answer 42

20-35% more effective than SI

Significant increase in accurate info and minimal increase in error

Question 43

Does the enhanced cognitive interview work?

Answer 43

Mixed results

Because good officers naturally use elements from both the OCI and the ECI

Question 44

What are some problems with the cognitive interview?

Answer 44

Takes longer to conduct and train
Some components more useful
Problems applying it in field
Only for certain individuals (some people this interview is not useful for- like kids)
-Kids do not understand all the instructions in cognitive interviews (change perspective one)
-Provide information they think the interviewer wants to hear
-They confabulate a lot of details.Use something like step wise

Question 45

Misinformation is likely to be internalized when…

Answer 45

Deals with peripheral details
Is provided after a delay
Is provided just before test
Comes from a high status source

Question 46

What do eyewitness experts think?

Answer 46

they don’t all agree on the reliability of research findings and whether we can apply the results of laboratory simulations to the real world.

Question 47

What four rules are outlined to reduce the likelihood of false identification?

Answer 47

the person who conducts the lineup should not know which member of the lineup is the suspect. eyewitnesses should be told explicitly that the criminal may not be present. third the suspect should not stand out in the lineup. A statement should be taken from the eyewitness at the time of identification as to his or her confidence that the identified person is actually the criminal.

Question 48

The attitudes hypothesis (cross race effect)

Answer 48

Based on attitudes towards other races, more specifically people with fewer prejudicial attitudes may be more inclined to distinguish among members of other races. Not well supported.

Question 49

The physiognomic homogeneity (cross race effect)

Answer 49

this hypothesis suggests that some races have less variability in their races- that is they all look a lot alike. Not well supported.

Question 50

Interracial contact (cross race effect)

Answer 50

Perhaps the hypothesis receiving the most attention, it examines the amount of contact or type of contact poeple have had with other races. it states that the more contact you have with other races, the better you will be able to identify them.

Question 51

a similarity to suspect Match vs match to description lineup

Answer 51

A match to suspect lineup matches lineup members to the suspects appearance. A difficulty with this is that there are many features that could be matched and if this is taken to an extreme it could be impossible to identify.
A match to description lineup sets limits on the number of features that need to be matched. With this type foils are matched only on the items that the witness provided in their description.