Memory

• eyewitness testimony is EE unreliable as memories are extremely fragile, become easily distorted and therefore reconstructed
• misleading information 


  incorrect information given to the eyewhitness that unintentionally distorts the memory of the original crime
• leading questions

  a phrased in a way that implies a particular answer and persuades the witness perspective
• loftus and palmer

  aim: investigation of how leading questions can affects the level of accuracy

  procedure:

  5 conditions each with a different verb

  45 ps watched the film

  asked what the speed of the car was

  conclusion: leading questions can distort the witness memory of the event
• post event discussion

  when witnesses speak after the event before being questioned

  they can be confused about the source of the information (source monitoring effect)

  witness memories become distorted as they believe other eyewitnesses are right and they are wrong (memory conformity effect)
• Gabbert et al study

  Aim: investigate the effects of post event discussion on accuracy

  Method: in pairs that viewed a stimulated crime event on video. It was the same event form different angles, they could see different elements. In the control they could discuss

  Results: post even discussion 71%, 0% from no event discussion

  Conclusion: exposure to post event discussion distorts the memory through the source monitoring effect.
• Standard police interviews

  • Bombarded with direct close ended questions
  • Often interrupted
  • Not allowed to talk freely
  • Rushed through details
• Cognitive interviewer

  • Minimizing distractions
  • Actively listening
  • Open ended questions
  • Avoid being judgmental
  • Effective recall
  • Uses retrieval cues
• Report everything

  • Report every singles detail regarding the incident
• context reinstatement

  • Asked to mentally recreate the environment
• Change order

  Asked to report the incident in different chronological orders
• Change perspective

  Asked to Report the incident from different perspective
• enhanced cognitive interview

  • Asking open ended questions
  • Getting witness to speak slowly
  • Adapt language to suit the witness
  • Interviewer should min distractions
• Anxiety

  State of emotional and physical arousal i response to a stressful situation
• Christianson and hubiette

  aim- investigate anxiety effect on EWT recall

  procedure- 110 real life witnesses at a bank robbery in Sweden, two different groups had a different level of anxiety depending on proximity. interviews within 4-15 months after the event

  results- showed good memories, closer exposure gave a better recall
• Johnson and Scott

  procedure- lab condition with two conditions. condition one, no weapon, hands covered in grease, talk about equipment failure. condition two, heated argument, held a bloodied letter opener. shown 50 photos to identify the man with

  findings- pen condition 49% accuracy, knife condition 33% accuracy
• yerkes and Dodson law

  low level make people less likely to recall details becomes of a lack of motivation to pay attention

  moderate level make people recall details more accurately because more attention to the details focus increased

  high anxiety can make people panic and focus on one thing (weapon) rather than anything else.
• Proactive interference 


  Causes forgetting of new infomation due to old infomation
• kepple ad underwood

  presented with trigrams and asked to recall at different intervals. to prevent rehearsal during time initial ps need to count backwards in threes

  results found ps forgot the end trigrams regardless of the time interval
• retroactive interference

  causes forgetting of old information due to learning new information
• McGeoch and McDonald

  asked to learn a list of 6 words NT I they could recite perfectly. ps were divided into 6 groups, 5 of them were asked to learn another set. participants were asked to recall from the first list. most forgetting occurred in the Synonyms
• Retrieval failure

  Known as cue dependent failure, states that we forget due to a lack of cues
• encoding specificity principle

  memory is most effective when infomation present at the time of encoding is also present at the time of retrieval