Memory

• What principle is the cognitive interview based on?

  Tulving and Thomson's encoding specificity principle which suggests memory is made up of lots of little traces.
• What is the enhanced cognitive interview?

  Fisher developed additional elements to the cognitive interview to focus on social dynamics of interactions between interviewers and eyewitnesses.

  e..g establishing eye contact, reduce eyewitness anxiety , minimise distractions, speak slowly and ask open questions
• What is the point of changing the perspective?

  This also disrupts our schemas because you are not relying on what you should have seen as you are having to think about someone else.
• What is the point of reversing the order?


  Thus is in order to disrupt our schemas to stop us relying on these for information as this would make it less accurate.
• What is the point of reinstating the context?


  This is useful as memories are often not accessible without the right retrieval cues.
• What is the point of report everything?

  Memories are interconnected with one another meaning one memory may be a cue for another. Additionally the recollection of small details from serval witnesses might be able to be pieced together as people often don't tell you information because they assume you know it.
• What does change the perspective mean?

  Recalling the event from a different persons point of view.
• What does reverse the order mean?

  Change the order of the description of events.
• What does reinstate the context mean?

  The interviewer encourages the eye-witness to mentally recreate the physical and psychological environment of the incident. This may include sounds they heard, particular details of the environment ..
• What does report everything mean?

  Ask the eye witness to report everything that they remember, without interruptions from the interviewer.
• What are the four aspects of the cognitive interview?

  Report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order and change the perspective
• What are another two evaluation points of anxiety and the effects it has on accuracy of EWT?


  Research suggesting anxiety may not play a part but instead surprise.e.g. pickle asked people to watch a thief enter a hair salon carry scissor (low surprise, high threat), a gun (high threat, high surprise) and a whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise).This is a weakness as it suggests that there may be an alternative explanation and that it has nothing to do with anxiety but in fact surprise.Fazey and hardy suggested a more complex relationship between anxiety and performance than the Yerkes Dodson model.e.g. they predicted that when physiological arousal increase beyond a certain level performance doesn't decrease however as cognitive anxiety increases performance falls dramatically.This is a weakness as it suggests there are other models that take a more holistic approach.
• What are 2 evaluation points of the effect of anxiety on eye witness testomonies?

  Critics have suggests that the weapon focus effect might increase the accuracy of EWT.e.g. researcher found that victims of violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene information than victims of non-violent crimes.This is a weakness as contradictory findings which has negative impact on the real world as it objective knowledge on crime is crucial for the prosecutions.A problem with studying anxiety is that there may be extraneous variables associated with emotional sensitivity.e.g. Bothwell found that people who are considered as stable produced more accurate responses when anxious compared to those who were neurotic.This suggests there may be other factors affect accuracy of EWT.
• What research did Deffenbacher find due to the yerkes-dodson effect?

  He conducted a meta analysis of 21 studies and found that 10 were linked to high arousal and low accuracy and 11 linked to low accuracy and low arousal.
• What does the yerke-dodson effect suggest?


  That arousal has a negative effect on performance (memory recall) when its very low or very high however moderate levels are actually benifical.
• What research is their to support the negative affect anxiety has on the accuracy of EWT?

  Johnson and Scott conducted an experiment where they had 2 conditions (one with a gun and one without a gun). Participants were asked to identify the person with the gun and people got it right 49% of the time in the no gun condition compared to 33% in the gun condition.
• What is the negative affect anxiety has on the accuracy EWT?

  Loftus suggested that anxiety can be an issue in crimes involving weapons as seeing a weapon causes you to focus all you attention onto the weapon as oppose to who is committing the crime.
• What research supports the positive affects anxiety has on EWT?

  Yuille and Cutshall investigated a real life gun shop robbery. 13 out of the 21 original witnesses agreed to take part in a follow up interview 4-5 months later and they found that those who were closer to the robbery recalled better than those who were far away
• What are positive affects on the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies?

  - Suggests those who are anxious are in the fight or flight response.

  - This response makes people more alert to your surroundings therefore increasing the accuracy of EWT as you are paying more attention to the person committing the crime and everyone around you.
• Define anxiety


  A state of emotional and physical arousal. These emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension. Physical changes include an increase to heart rate and level of sweating.
• What are two weaknesses of post-event discussion?

  Although Gabbert's study provides evidence that post evident discussion effects that accuracy of eye witness testimonies it doesn't tell us why these distortions occur.E.g. this could be due to having bad memory and than effect everyone differently.This is a weakness of post-event discussion because psychologists need to take Gabbert's theory and understand the causes of this inaccurate recall.An issue with Gabberts study is she only uses one type of actress in the video clip.e.g. Gabbert used only a white actress who was in her 40s which isn't the stereotypical profile of a criminal.This is a weakness as it reduces the effectiveness of the study as our schema for criminal events is thought to be a young male suggesting people in the experiment might just assume she isn't a criminal because she doesn't fit their criminal schema.
• What are two strengths of post-event discussion?

  One strength of Gabbert's study is it took place in a highly controlled lab.For example she used a control group (no discussion) to ensure that it wasn't challenging to see the theft.This is a strength of post event discussions as it shows the study has high internal validity meaning we know the results accurately explain eye witness testimonies.HOWEVER LACK OF VALIDITY - people won't be feeling as anxious watching the video as they would be the real crimeOne strength of research into post-event discussion is it has many practical applications.For example police officers advise witnesses not to discuss the case with anyone and will aim to interview as close to the event as possible.This is a strength of post event discussion because it shows that research on this is useful as it can be used to ensure criminals are imprisoned.HOWEVER THIS IS AN IDEAL SITUATION
• What is an additional problem with eye witness testimonies?

  Every time an eye-witness is interviewed there is a possibility a comment from the interviewer will be incorporated into their memory of events.

  Particularly affects children who are giving eye witnesses
• What is the conclusion of Gabbert's study?


  The results highlight the issue of conformity discussion and the powerful effect it can have on eyewitness testimonies
• What were the results of Gabbert's study?


  - 71% of the witnesses in the co-group recalled information they hadn't seen and 60% said the girl was guilt

  - In the control group they checked it was easy to see if they girl had or hadn't stolen and they found 6.67% gave a guilty verdict with no discussion
• What was the procedure of Gabbert's study?

  - 60 students at Aberdeen uni and 60 older people in a local community

  - There were two conditions with one being tested individually (control group) and one being tested in a group (co witness group).

  - The saw the same crime from different perspectives but only one group witnessed the girl steal the money

  - Participants in co witness group discussed the crime together

  - All participants completed a questionnaire about the event (including questions of what the person was wearing and if they thought the person had stole the money)
• What was the aim of Gabbert's study?


  To investigate the effects of post-event discussion on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
• Who conducted at study investigating the effect of post event discussion?


  Gabbert
• Define post event discussion?

  A discussion that occurs after an event takes place and this means that their eye witness may become contaminated.
• What are weakness of leading questions?

  Issues with Loftus and palmers original study including that it may be affected by response bias.e.g. people replicated the study and found when the questions were presented in the same order (unlike Loftus) participants gave accurate EWT.This is a weakness as it suggests question order may be a better explanation for the change in behaviour.A problem with Loftus and Palmers study is that there are methodological issues.e.g. study used a video of a car crash which was artifical.This is a weakness as they won't be feeling high levels of anxiety which will affect the accuracy of their EWT.A problem with EWT research is that there may be extraneous variables affecting the results.e.g. age has been shown to affect the accuracy of EWT.Thus is a weakness as it suggests EWT may be mediated by age rather than misleading questions
• What is a strength of leading questions?

  There has been further supporting evidence.e.g. college students who as children visited Disneyland were asked misleading questions about characters that didn't exist and they found that many said they had shook hands with characters that didn't exist.This provides evidence for leading questions having an impact on everyday memory which increases the internal valdity.
• What were the findings of Loftus and Palmers second experiment?


  Smashed = 32% said they saw broken glass

  Hit = 14% said they saw broken glass

  Control group = 12% said they saw broken glass
• What was the method of Loftus and Palmers second experiment?

  Repeated the original study with just the verbs smashed and hit. And afterwards asking participants a series of questions including "did you see any glass"
• What was the conclusion of Loftus and Palmers experiment?

  Results show that the accuracy of EWT can be affected by a single word and can have a significant effect on the accuracy of our judgement
• What was the results of Loftus and Palmers experiment?


  - Estimated speed was affected by the verb used

  - Use of word smashed had an average speed of 40.5mph

  - Use of word contacted had an average speed of 31.8mph
• What was the method of Loftus and Palmer's study

  - 45 American male participants were divided into 5 groups of 9 people

  - Participants watched a video of a car that crashed into another car and asked what speed the car was going at

  - Loftus and Palmer manipulated the verb in the question e.g. how fast were the cars when they smashed/ collided/ bumped/ hit/ contacted with each other
• What was the aim of Loftus and Palmer's study?

  To investigate the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
• Who did an experiment on misleading information in eye-witness testimony?

  Loftus and Palmer
• Define leading questions


  A question which because of the way it is phrased suggests a certain answer
• How does our schemas affect memory?

  Our schema shortcuts information and fills in the gaps in our memory.