Section three

• What is section three

  Collection of cognitive evidence
• What are line ups

  A line of people including the suspect and a number of fake people. Witness looks through a one way screen
• What are identikits


  producing an accurate image of a suspect by the witnesses description.
• What is a problem with line ups

  Witnesses can feel under pressure to choose someone.
• How can line ups be improved

  Tell them the perpetrators may or may not be in the line.
• What is a problem with an identikit

  Produces very strange looking faces and is reliant on memory which can be inaccurate.
• What core study can be used as evidence in section three

  Loftus and palmer
• What does Loftus and palmer show about interviewing 


  No leading questions should be asked and memory can be distorted
• Inbau and Reid created what in 1962 


  A police manual still used in the US covering the Reid technique
• What is the Reid technique

  A 9 step procedure of interrogation that forces a suspect to confess.
• What is the difference between an interview and an interrogation

  Interviews are non accusing
• What are the 9 steps of Reid

  Positive confrontation

  theme development

  handling denial

  overcoming objection

  retention of attention

  handling passive mood

  presenting alternative

  oral confession

  written confession
• What is positive confrontation 


  Tell the suspect that they ARE guilty and you have the evidence to prove it.
• What is theme development

  Shifting the blame to someone else. Find a moral justification to make the suspect feel better
• What is handling denial

  Never allow the suspect to deny guilt.
• Overcoming objections? 


  Interrogator should not argue objections but use them to develop themes further
• Handling the suspects passive mood 


  Suspect can become defeated or passive, interrogator should use this to infer guilt
• What is alternative question 


  Interrogator presents an alternative option where one is more socially acceptable.
• What are the strengths of Reid’s technique

  Money is saved as a lengthy trial is unnecessary

  reduces anxiety of victims by offering earlier closure
• Weaknesses of Reid 


  May lead to fake confessions
• What factors can lead to false confessions

  Young or old people

  low IQ

  mental disorder and even time of interrogation
• Why would Reid technique aim to increase anxiety

  In order to motivate them to want to leave
• What did redlich find about false confessions

  People with mental illness reported a 22% lifetime false confession rate.
• What is a standard interview

  Police receive little training - interruptions , short answer questions,
• What is a cognitive interview

  Has been developed using knowledge of cognitive processes. Based on context dependent memory (grant) and more than one retrieval path.
• Four stages of cognitive interview

  Context reinstatement

  in depth reporting

  re ordering narrative

  another perspective
• What is context reinstatement 


  Encouraging witnesses to reinstate the context in their minds.
• What is reordering the narrative 


  Telling the story back to front.
• Reporting from different perspective?

  Perspective of another witness
• What is the enhanced cognitive interview

  Adds social aspects, appear to improve communication. Encourages use of imagery
• Key research ? 


  Memon and higham.
• What was the aim of MH


  to write a review article of the evidence for the cognitive interview technique
• What were the four themes they had in their review

  -Effectiveness of various components

  -relationship between cog and other techniques

  -different measures of memory performance

  -interviewer variables
• They attempted to identify the effective component of the CI. Not many pieces of research have done this. They report on one of memons studies where college students were interviewed using either - context reinstatement - changing order- changing perspective. One control group was asked to try harder. No differences were found.
• However in a later study Milne compared the full CI to each of its components and found that the CI was more accurate than the individual components. However the exception was the context reinstatement which led to MH concluding the context reinstatement is the most important.
• MH suggest that the increased effectiveness of the CI is due to the training not the actual technique. So they recommend that comparisons aren’t made between the CI and the SI. Instead they suggest comparisons with the structured interview
• MH suggest that measures of memory need to be able to take into account the fact that the interview may change the memory.
• MH suggest another problem affecting research into CI is the amount of training given. It varies from study to study, they say that a minimum of two days training should be given.
• Conclusions Of MH

  There still needs to be more research into CI

  researchers need an appropriate way of measuring memory.
• What is application one 


  PEACE model