Eyewitness testimony is crucial when it comes to trying to solve crimes, and sometimes eyewitness is the only option police have to solve a crime (Wells and Olson, 2002). When receiving an eyewitness testimony police tend to use a cognitive interview and it has been very important in shaping the approach police use to investigative interviewing (Dando, Wilcock, Milne, and Henry, 2008). A cognitive interview is a method of interviewing an adult witness by “establishing a rapport with the witness, minimizing interruption and distractions caused by the interviewer, and encouraging the witness to report all the details without guessing (Lapaglia, Wilford, Rivard, Chan, and Fisher).” The cognitive interview can also increase the total amount of correct information reported without increasing the amount of errors (Bekerian and Dennett, 1993). “False memories created by suggested misinformation and misattributed source not only feel real as true memoirs, they can be persistent (Myers, 2012: p. 329).”
This paper will discuss research evidence in examining whether misleading suggestion can alter a persons later memory reports, including after a cognitive interview.
The issue of misleading suggestions altering later memory and memory after a cognitive interview was addressed by Lapagila, Wilford, Rivard, Chan, and Fisher (2013). (Description of methods): The experiment was conducted a university in the Midwest and a university in the Southeast. A total of 102 graduate students took part in the study, 47 women and 55 men (mean age 20.5 years), 72 students were from the Midwestern University and 30 students were from the Southeastern University. Of those who participated in the study 66 of the students were non-Hispanic Caucasia...
... middle of paper ...
...ewitness testimony.
References
Bekerian, D. A., & Dennett, J. L. (1993). The cognitive interview technique: Reviving the issues. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 7(4), 275-297. doi:10.1002/acp.2350070403
Dando, C., Wilcock, R., Milne, R., & Henry, L. (2009). A modified cognitive interview procedure for frontline police investigators. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(5), 698-716. doi:10.1002/acp.1501
Davies, G., & Hine, S. (2007). Change blindness and eyewitness testimony. The Journal of Psychology, 141(4), 423-434. doi: 10.3200/JRLP.141.4.423-434
Myers, D. G. (2013). Psychology (10th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
LaPaglia, J. A., Wilford, M. M., Rivard, J. R., Chan, J. C. K., & Fisher, R. P. (2014). Misleading suggestions can alter later memory reports even following a cognitive interview. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(1), 1-9. doi:10.1002/acp.2950
“ Some Close Encounters of a Mental Kind ” by Stephen Jay Gould is about the tendency for our minds to ‘lie’ to ourselves because of a certain key phrase that can cause people to believe certain events happened. This can be done by altering the types of question you want the victim to hear. It can be a certain modified questions or the way the question are presented to us that can cause our answers to be slightly false.
Roediger III, H. L., Watson, J. M., McDermott, K. B., & Gallo, D. A. (2001). Factors that determine false recall: A multiple regression analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3), 385-407.
Tadić, A., Wagner, S., Hoch, J., Başkaya, Ö., von Cube, R., Skaletz, C., ... & Dahmen, N. (2009).
False information provided by people, perhaps because believed it is what the interviewer wants to hear, The Hawthorne effect, invalidates it (Taylor, 1995).
Zhang, Y. B., Harwood, J., Williams, A., Ylänne-McEwen, V., Wadleigh, P. M., & Thimm, C.
Refrain from asking many questions during recall. The client can only devote attention to so many ideas at once, so repeated suggestions from the clinician can confuse retrieval and even interfere with former memories due to retroactive interference
There has been considerable debate worldwide, regarding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system. Particularly, arguments have surrounded wrongful convictions that have resulted from incorrect eyewitness evidence (Areh, 2011; Howitt, 2012; Nelson, Laney, Bowman-Fowler, Knowles, Davis & Loftus, 2011). The purpose of this essay is to consider psychological research about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and its placement in the criminal justice system. Firstly, this essay will define how eyewitnesses and their testimonies are used within the criminal justice system and the current debate surrounding its usage. Secondly, the impact of post-identification feedback will be used to show the affect on the confidence of a witness. Thirdly, studies around gender related differences will show how a witnesses gender can affect memory recall and accuracy. Fourthly, empirical studies will be used to highlight how a psychological experience called change blindness can cause mistakes in eyewitness identification. Finally, the effect of cross-examination will be used to explore the impact on eyewitness accuracy. It will be argued, that eyewitness testimony is not accurate and highly subjective, therefore, the criminal justice system must reduce the impact that eyewitness testimony is allowed to have. Developing better policies and procedures to avoid wrongful convictions by misled judges and jury members can do this.
Tackett, J. L., Lahey, B. B., van Hulle, C., Waldman, I., Krueger, R. F., & Rathouz, P. J. (2013).
Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2005). With sadness comes accuracy; with happiness, false memory. Psychological Science, 16(10), 785-791.
Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.
Segal, E. A., Cimino, A. N., Gerdes, K. E., Harmon, J. K., & Wagaman, M. (2013). A
Similar studies were done to a different set of college students and they tended to have the same results. After giving as much detail about each memory, the students were interviewed about what they may have written done about what they had remembered. During the last part of the experiment, each of the students were debriefed and asked to guess which memory they believed was false.
Roediger, H. L. III, & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803-814
...Dermott, K. B. (1996). Misinformation effects in recall: Creating false memories through repeated retrieval. Journal of Memory and Language, 5(2), 300-318. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1996.0017
Barker, V., Giles, H., Hajek, C., Ota, H., Noels, K., Lim, T-S., & Somera, L. (2008).