Forensic Psych Final Exam

How should you interview an eyewitness if you are focused on accuracy?

Avoid misrepresenting information, Avoid leading questions, Make the witness comfortable, Minimize delay of questioning

What is the risk of not giving an eyewitness cues?

They may fail to provide all relevant information

How should you interview an eyewitness if you are focused on getting more information?

Use recognition questions (e.g., multiple-choice questions about features like hair color)

What are the goals of a good eyewitness interview?

Maximize the amount of correct information, Minimize incorrect information, Avoid contaminating the witness’s memory, Reduce traumatic effects on the witness, Maintain integrity of the police investigation

What are the common steps in a typical police interview?

Officer introduces themselves, Open-ended report, Direct questioning, Asking for any additional information

What are common problems with typical police interviews?

Open-ended reports are interrupted frequently, Lack of rapport building, Witnesses are interrupted too soon (within ~7.5 seconds), The witness becomes passive and provides less information

Which questioning techniques do NOT assist recall?

Short, specific questions

Why might formal or technical language in interviews be problematic?

Witnesses may struggle to understand certain jargon or legal terms

What is the issue with predetermined or random question orders?

Follow-up questions may be out of sync, confusing the witness

How does mixing modalities affect recall?

It decreases accuracy because switching between question styles confuses the witness

What are examples of problematic questioning techniques?

Leading questions

What does the Cognitive Interview focus on?

Psychological processes of interviewer and interviewee, Social dynamics, Cognitions, Communication

What are key social dynamics in the Cognitive Interview?

Building rapport, Encouraging active witness participation, Using open-ended questions, Avoiding interruptions

What cognitive techniques improve eyewitness recall?

Encoding Specificity, Context Reinstatement, Report Everything, Multiple paths to retrieval

What is cognitive load, and how does the CI reduce it?

Cognitive load refers to the mental effort needed to recall information, CI reduces it by tailoring questions and avoiding interruptions

How does the CI minimize errors?

Asking neutral, non-leading questions, Instructing the witness not to guess

How does the interviewer’s role differ in the CI?

They ask open-ended questions, They avoid suggestion, They carefully listen and take notes in the interviewee’s own words

What are the five phases of the Cognitive Interview?

Greet & establish rapport, Context reinstatement & free recall, Focused retrieval, Ask witness-compatible questions, Closure

How effective is the Cognitive Interview?

Collects 25-50% more correct information

What populations benefit from the Cognitive Interview?

Elderly (if officers invest the time), Children (with adjustments, though risk of fabrications exists)

What are the limitations of the Cognitive Interview?

Requires high-level training, Time-consuming, Some techniques are difficult to implement

How does the SAI compare to other interview techniques?

It collects 23% more correct details

What are the benefits of the Self-Administered Interview?

Standardization, Allows more witnesses to provide evidence, Reduces police resources needed, Helps maintain memory and prevents misinformation

What are the limitations of the Self-Administered Interview?

Some people may struggle with the paper format (e.g., children, non-native speakers), Victims of violent crimes may require social support, Some witnesses dislike the impersonal nature

Why must eyewitness interviews be handled carefully?

Eyewitness testimony is forensic evidence and can be contaminated

How was the SAI used in a real case?

Norway Mass Murder (Anders Breivik case)

What are the main advantages of the Cognitive Interview?

It considers social dynamics, cognition, and communication, It increases the accuracy of recall

What are the main advantages of the Self-Administered Interview?

It provides similar benefits to the CI but requires fewer resources

Why is interviewing children different from interviewing adults?

They are more easily influenced

What is a key reason children may go along with what an interviewer says?

Demand characteristics (They try to please the interviewer)

Children’s ______ development affects their ability to understand and recall events.

Cognitive

Which of the following can impact a child’s response in an interview?

Limited life experience, Emotional state, Ability to distinguish between imagination and reality

Why are child interviews often related to difficult-to-prove but serious crimes?

They often involve physical or sexual abuse

Why might children hesitate to disclose abuse?

Embarrassment, Expecting not to be believed, Fear of negative consequences

How do free narratives compare between children and adults?

Accuracy is similar, but children provide fewer details

What does “formal reticence” mean in child interviews?

Children give minimally responsive answers due to cognitive limitations and lack of experience.

Who is most susceptible to leading questions?

Younger children

 Children are more likely to assume information is true and ______ it into their memory.

Incorporate

Why are children more suggestible?

Weaker memory, Poor source monitoring, Deferring to adults’ authority

In the rabbit study, which group actually saw the rabbit?

Witnessed event group

What was the false rumor in the rabbit study?

That the rabbit was seen outside eating carrots

How did hearing a secondhand rumor affect children’s reporting?

It led to more misreporting

 Free recall-style questions lead to ______ errors

Omission

recognition questions increase ______ errors?

Commission

What is a commission error?

Saying something happened when it did not

Which of the following is NOT a recommended strategy for interviewing children?

Suggesting answers

What are key components of a structured child interview?

Rapport building, ensuring the child understands the interview, interview closure

What is the main goal of the NICHD protocol?

To use open-ended prompts to gather accurate disclosures from children

Which interview technique uses cards to help children recall details?

Narrative elaboration

What is a potential problem with using anatomical dolls?

They can result in unreliable information

Why are body diagrams sometimes used instead of anatomical dolls?

They help prompt or clarify disclosures of abuse

What should a good child interview technique do?

Work with the child’s memory system and avoid social influence

When interviewing children, we must be extra careful to avoid ______ and ensure they understand what is being asked.

Suggestion

Why do false memories occur?

Memory is reconstructive; every time we retrieve a memory, we reconstruct it, and our present self influences the memory

1. What are the three main ways to study false memories?
   Answer: DRM task, misinformation tasks, autobiographical memory tasks.
   

False memories occur because memory is __________.

Reconstructive

According to Mazzini, Loftus, & Kirsch (2001), which of the following is not a necessary step for creating a false memory?

The event must have been directly witnessed

What is "Imagination Inflation"?

A phenomenon where imagining an event increases confidence that it actually occurred

Imagining an event increases the likelihood of believing it happened. This is called __________.

Imagination Inflation

What are two common tasks used to measure false memories?

DRM task and misinformation tasks

The DRM task involves

Participants producing false memories for studied words

How does repeated recall contribute to false memories?

Asking people to recall a specific event multiple times increases the details they "remember," even for false events

In the "Lost in the Mall" study, participants were given

A mix of true and false memories from their past

The __________ study demonstrated that people can recall details about false childhood events after being presented with a mix of true and false memories.

Lost in the Mall

What are the three pillars of false memory prevention?

Orientation, Evaluation, Corroboration

Which of the following is NOT a component of orientation in false memory prevention?

Criterion comparison

What is "grain-size selection" in memory retrieval?

The level of detail we use when recalling information (e.g., recollection vs. familiarity)

Warnings about false memories can __________ but do not __________ false memories in the DRM task.

decrease, eliminate

How does mental recapitulation help in preventing false memories?

It involves repeating information mentally to improve memory retrieval accuracy

False memory implantation is much less likely when

The event is implausible

What is the "distinctiveness heuristic"?

The expectation that memories of images are more distinctive than words, leading to fewer false memories when recalling images

 What role does collateral knowledge play in memory retrieval?

It helps validate or disqualify memories based on prior knowledge and plausibility

 If a trusted person tells you that an event did not happen, you may start to doubt your memory. This is an example of

Non-believed memories

The ability to recall information that disqualifies a false memory is called __________.

Recall-to-Reject

What are the three types of episodic memories?

Continuous, Discovered, Recovered

Which type of memory is always accessible and remembered?

Continuous

Discovered memories were ________ for some period of time

Suppressed

What characterizes a recovered memory?

It was repressed, inaccessible for a long period, and then became accessible

Recovered memories

are often surprising or shocking

What is the key difference between suppression and repression?

Suppression is a conscious effort to avoid remembering, while repression is an unconscious mechanism to banish thoughts

Suppression involves avoiding rehearsal, meaning a person forgets on purpose. Is this a conscious or unconscious process?

Conscious

Repression is an unconscious mechanism that banishes ________ thoughts.

Unacceptable

 What is dissociative amnesia?

A loss of memory due to a traumatic or stressful event

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of dissociative amnesia?

Caused by substance use or neurological condition

What case started "The Memory Wars"?

The case of Eileen Franklin-Lipsker

What study demonstrated how easy it is to create false memories?

Lost in the Mall

What unethical research practices were Crook and Dean accused of?

Conducting experiments without ethical approval, using student-generated data unethically, inflating false memory rates

Loftus and colleagues argued that _______was the correct rate of false memories.

25%

According to Loftus, many studies show that false memories can be ________ with ease.

Implanted

Define trauma in psychological terms.

A stressor + response; typically involves a lack of control over the event.

Which of the following events is least likely to cause memory loss?

Minor car accident

What is the most common response to trauma?

PTSD

Are traumatic memories inherently different from other autobiographical memories?

Yes, but only if the person has PTSD

Is memory for trauma better or worse than for nontraumatic events?

Both, depending on the memory system engaged

Can traumatic memories be forgotten and later recalled?

Yes

What is retrieval inhibition?

Trying not to think about something makes it harder to remember.

What research paradigm involves viewing word pairs and suppressing recall of certain words?

Think/No-Think paradigm

In the directed-forgetting paradigm, participants are prompted to ________ or ________ words.

Remember (RRRR), Forget (FFFF)

What does the correlation between trauma and dissociation suggest?

That trauma may cause repression, but correlation does not equal causation

According to a study, what percentage of undergraduates believe memories can be repressed?

81%