Eyewitness memory plays a crucial role in many criminal trials, and a substantial body of psychological research on eyewitness memory has continued to develop over the years. There are different types of eyewitness memory and various factors that influence the eyewitness memory. Several methods have been considered as a means by which they can improve the eyewitness memory and also as means to evaluate how eyewitness memory is assessed in the course of investigations and criminal trials.
The advent of psychological research is related to the legal system when Alfred Binet demonstrated that an individual’s response to questioning could be influenced by the way in which the questions are asked. It marked the beginning of empirical research that involved witness testimony after which William Stern applied it directly to research on eyewitness testimony. He demonstrated that eyewitnesses are susceptible to error and the variables surrounding their witnessing such as emotions at the time of the occurrence have the ability to affect the rate of accuracy. Later on, Elizabeth Loftus demonstrated that memory in general even that of an eyewitness could be altered easily by the way in which the interviewer asked the questions (Ridley & Gabbert, 2012).
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Eyewitness memory can be divided into two general classifications: the eyewitness recall and the eyewitness identification. The classification corresponds to the traditional recall and recognition distinction pervasive incorporated in the cognitive psychological research on the human memory. The eyewitness recall most often plays a significant role in the investigation of crimes. Police officers responding to the occurrence of a particular crime need to interview the eyewitnesses on the memories they have about the crime. The information obtained includes the description of the perpetrator(s) and the details of the specific crime. These details remembered by the eyewitnesses could include information such as descriptions of weapons or the clothes worn by the perpetrators and is very useful in an ongoing investigation and even in the trial.
Several factors could influence the accuracy of eyewitness descriptions such as the stress levels experienced by the eyewitness or the presence of a weapon during the interview. Witness questioning directly relates to the information that is given to the witnesses after they have experienced the event, the way in which they are questioned about the occurrence of the crime and they're being there at the time of the event. The wording and intonations used at the time of interviewing the eyewitnesses can easily lead them to provide incorrect information on the details of the crime.
In the conducting of interviews, questioning can be done in a way that induces subsequent reports containing false details. When an eyewitness is asked whether they saw a broken headlight at the time of the crime, and another is asked whether they saw the broken headlight at the time of the crime, the one asked and heard the word ‘the’ rather than the word ‘a’ is more likely to indicate that they had actually seen a broken light. It is therefore of significant importance to have questions in an interview with an eyewitness not be framed in a manner to suggest something to inform what they thought they had seen and it could be that they had not witnessed the imposed suggestions.
The memory of an event cannot only be altered by the way the questions are asked during the interview to the eyewitness but also by the act of repeatedly questioning a witness can have profound effects on the witness’ memory of the event. It, therefore, is important to have ways of improving eyewitness memory. The best approach to improving eyewitness memory is conducting cognitive interviews. They are derived from the three basic processes social dynamics, communication, and memory i.e. cognition.
In A case study of eyewitness memory of a crime, a study was conducted to examine the effect of an eyewitness’ condition at the time of the questioning on their memory of a crime happening (Cutshall, 2016). 21 witnesses witnessed a shooting incident in which a person died, and another was seriously wounded. The incident happened on a major thoroughfare at around mid-afternoon. The investigating police interviewed all of the witnesses of which 13 agreed to participate in an interview after a period of between 4-5 months after the occurrence of the event. The 13 participating witnesses were aged between 15 and 32 years. The eyewitness accounts provided by both the police and research interviews were analyzed and recorded at the time of the present study.
In the research interview after the passing of the stipulated time, the witnesses were highly accurate in their accounts, and very little change was observed on their accuracy or recall. However, some aspects and estimations were found to be erroneous like the ones on color, age, and height and weight memory. Their stress levels at the time of the event did not seem to have negative effects on their subsequent memory, and they appeared to resist leading questions. It led to the question of how the generalizability of most laboratory questions can be accurately based on the eyewitness memory. It, therefore, confirms that there are factors that affect an interviewee’s memory on their witnessing a crime.
In a different study, three different interview procedures were compared to determine their effectiveness on optimizing the eyewitness memory performance. The three interview procedures evaluated were the cognitive interview that is based on the memory retrieval mnemonics based on the current memory theory, the hypnosis interview that was currently controversial and the standard control police interview. The interviews for the study were conducted in a controlled and ecologically valid laboratory setting in which 89 undergraduates viewed various police training films of simulated violent crimes and they were questioned individually in interactive interviews. The interactive interviews were conducted 48 hours later by 1 of the 16 law enforcement personnel that had completed a 40-hour course in forensic hypnosis, and they also had field experience in at least a hundred cases.
The results showed that both the cognitive and hypnosis procedures produced a significantly greater number of correct items of information from the students as compared with the standard interview. It was especially the case for most pronounced crime scenarios with high-density events. It held even for the most critical facts from the films. The number of incorrect information items generated by the interview did not differ across the three different interview conditions. The observed memory enhancement was analyzed and interpreted by the memory guidance techniques commonly used in both the cognitive and hypnosis interviews. The results were not influenced by the differential questioning time, heightened stress or the interviewers’ motivation (Geiselman , 2016). Cognitive interviews are an effective means by which eyewitness’ memory can be enhanced on the criminal event.
In the past 30 years, researchers have conducted studies to examine the impact of heightened stress on the fidelity of eyewitness memory. Several Meta analyses were conducted on 27 different independent tests to determine the effects of heightened stress on an eyewitness’ identification of the crime perpetrator or the target person. 36 other different and independent tests of eyewitness recall of the details associated with the crime were done. The results showed that high levels of stress impact both types of eyewitness memory negatively. The Meta analytic Z-scores, the un-weighted and weighted sample size, ranged from high-stress condition to low-stress condition (Steven, 2015). The overall effects were average for both the proportion of correct identifications and the accuracy of the eyewitness recall. The effect sizes were significantly larger for the target present lineups as compared to the target absent lineups for the eyewitness identification studies than for the face recognition studies. It was also the case for the eyewitness studies that employed a staged crime than for the eyewitness studies that employed other means to induce the stress. Introducing new variables affects the witness’ recall of the occurrence of the event negatively as compared to engaging them in cognitive interviews.
Despite the fact that the suggestibility of eyewitness memory has been conducted and documented, it is not established in the conducted studies to which extent the misled eyewitness might come to believe that they indeed remember seeing the suggested details they report. A study was conducted to determine and assess if eyewitnesses confuse the misleading suggestions for their actual real memories on how they witnessed an event occurrence. The eyewitnesses were asked specific questions about their memory for the source of the suggested items to them. The results obtained in 5 experiments showed that misled eyewitnesses at times come to believe that they remember seeing items that were only suggested to them, this phenomenon is called the source of misattribution effect (Zaragoza, 2014). The results also showed that the magnitude of the source misattribution effect varies and that these source misattributions are not an inevitable consequence of exposure to the suggestions. The misattributions can be avoided through effective means of enhancing the eyewitness’ memory such as conducting cognitive interviews (Zaragoza, 2014).
Innovative research procedures have been incorporated to do the cognitive interviews that are mainly designed to aid the eyewitnesses to recall the details of crimes. A study was conducted to evaluate an innovative interview research that was designed to help the eyewitnesses in a particular crime to remember the details of the crime. The study involved two different experiments. The first experiment was conducted to determine the level of success of the cognitive interview in a nonstudent population. 51 nonstudent volunteers viewed police training films of simulated violent crimes and were individually questioned in interactive interviews (Geiselman, Esther, & Holland, 2011).
The interviews were conducted 48 hours later by experienced law enforcement personnel. The cognitive interview obtained significantly more correct information from the subjects as compared to the standard police interview. It was also without any accompanying increase in the correct information or confabulation. The second experiment was designed to separate the cognitive interview into different constituent parts and to ensure it was able to evaluate the success each of mnemonic (Geiselman, Esther, & Holland, 2011).
The study’s results and analysis concluded that all the four general mnemonics that were contained in the interview were useful and should be retained. The four mnemonics used involved two increasing feature overlap that was between encoding and retrieval contexts, and the other two encouraged the use of many retrieval paths. The study showed that the cognitive interview is a viable memory enhancement technique that is both an effective and efficient approach as well as acceptable legally (Geiselman, Esther, & Holland, 2011).
All these studies confirm that there is a dire need to come up with mechanisms to which the eyewitness memory can be enhanced. The paper is in support of conducting cognitive interviews as a means by which correct information can be obtained from eyewitnesses, and their memory of the happenings around the occurrence of the criminal events can be enhanced and improved. It suggests four different research designs that could be used to see the effectiveness of innovating new ways to strengthen cognitive interviews and achieve the desired results. The four different designs are the action research design, case study design, causal design and descriptive design.
Action research design will function to ensure that the evidence obtained makes it possible for the issues related to eyewitness’ memory can be addressed logically and ensure it is not done ambiguously. The research will entail obtaining necessary information on the issue of eyewitness memory, and it will tackle on availing the needed type of evidence. The research will be conducted by having a study that involves the provision of information on how effectively eyewitnesses have been able to give correct information on the criminal events and occurrences they witnessed.
Evaluation will be done on the type of data that has been collected previously obtained when engaging eyewitnesses in interviews. Then the new approach will be used to interview the same eye witnesses after 2 or 3 days. The interviewing process will begin by directing the eyewitness to take some time with their close to mentally reconstruct the activities surrounding the occurrence of the crime. After which they will be asked to give all the details they remember on the same. This will be done by taking the witnesses to revisit the crime scene and see them ascertain the details and of events that took place at the time of the crime.
The interviewing personnel will not interrupt the witness as they narrate the happenings. The interviewer will also only ask open ended questions that do not have a single trace of asking as if in a manner to suggest something to alter the eyewitness’ memory. Witnesses will be encouraged to describe the events occurrences from multiple perspectives and asked to give what they think about the occurrence of the particular event. They also will be encouraged to simply say they don’t know in the case where they are asked something they do not remember instead of guessing when they are faced with uncertainties in the process of the cognitive interview.
The interviewers will strive to establish a rapport with the eyewitness to be in a position to balance the issues of their authority and encouraging active participation on the interviewee’s part. After the eyewitness has exhausted their description of the event, the interviewer will only ask probing questions as a way of exhausting the eyewitness memory on the crime. Careful and thorough use of this procedure will lead to an increase in the eyewitness’ memory of the event without increasing incorrect information from the way the interview questions are asked (Miller, 2014).
Case study design could also be used in the research of this topic. The case study will be an in-depth study of the cognitive interview’s impact on the eyewitness memory rather than a sweeping statistical survey or a comprehensive comparative inquiry. It will narrow down on the most effective approaches of cognitive interviews that work best to enhance an eyewitness’ memory of the happenings revolving around the occurrence of the crime they witnessed. The study will rely on the different sources and studies that have been documented after the investigation of the eyewitness memory effectiveness. The study will make use of the case study research design to examine on the contemporary real life situations and work at providing the basis for the application of concepts and theories revolving around the effectiveness of using cognitive interviews to enhance eyewitness memory on the crimes they witnessed. It will provide detailed descriptions of the specific cases that are greatly dependent on the eyewitness memory (Collins, 2015).
30 witnesses will be interviewed using this approach of cognitive interviewing in five different cases. These eyewitnesses will be picked from people who have previously and recently undergone the standard control police interviews. The interviewer will make efforts to mentally reinstate the environmental and personal context of the crime for the witness. They will ask them about their general activities on that day, and the feelings they had as the eyewitnesses were running their day, and this will be based either on sights, sounds, emotions and the weather. The witnesses will also be asked to report the incident from different perspectives and even describe what they think the other witnesses or even the crime perpetrators might have seen at the time of the event. This will help in having them go through the moments of that day before, during and after the occurrence of the crime and this will give them an upper hand in remembering what took place without making them feel obliged to give a predetermined version of the story.
The causal design is another approach that could be taken in researching the effectiveness of using cognitive interviews in boosting the eyewitness’ memory. The casual design will be conducted as a means by which the phenomena involving the occurrences of a crime can be well understood by the eyewitnesses through the use of conditional statements. This will help in establishing the measure of the impact caused should particular changes be made. This is to ascertain that the eyewitness’ memory is a true recollection of the incidences that took place at the time of the crime. It will be used to eliminate the commonly made assumptions based on the expected occurrences that are mostly associated with particular types of crime. The causal explanations offered in this study will reflect the measure to which cognitive interviews are effective in enhancing an eyewitness memory on the details involved in a given crime. The causal effect in this study will be experienced when a variation in the crime occurrences are made independent resulting in different details as compared to the variations made when different variations are introduced.
The interviewers will lead the witnesses into recounting the incidents in a different narrative order. Due to the effect of the time taken in conducting the interviews, the witnesses will be questioned a day after they have undergone the standard control police interview. It is expected that the eyewitnesses will tend to recall more recent events more clearly than the others. The witnesses will be asked to work backward from the end to the beginning several times. The interviewers will introduce unrelated variables at first to see what they bring up in the witness’ memory. After which they will introduce related variables as the eyewitnesses recount the happenings (Fisher, 2012). The study will make it possible to ascertain the effectiveness of cognitive interviews that are conducted without the introduction of susceptible suggestions on obtaining accurate information from the eyewitnesses of a particular crime.
The descriptive design will be used to provide answers to the questions of who, what, when, where and how that is associated with the particular crimes being investigated. The inferences made from the answers given to these questions will be very helpful in answering the why question since it will not be conclusively answered by the descriptive approach directly. The study will be used to acquire information on the issues revolving around the occurrence of the crime concerning the conditions and variables involved in the situations. Keen observations will be made at the time of the interview to determine the limiting factors at the time of questioning so that they can be figured out and provide the necessary answers.
The participants will be recently (1 week) interviewed eyewitnesses questioned through the standard control police interviews. Witnesses will be asked to report every single detail they remember including those they think as trivial. This will not only work towards their retrieval of the events but also their meaning to them as the eyewitness. The number of correctly remembered facts on both interviews will be recorded as well as the number of errors. The interviewers will dwell on having the eyewitnesses remember all the minor details they might have left out in the previous questioning.
It is in this way that the study will use the apparently seeming as unimportant details to act as helpful triggers to obtain the missing key information about the event. The technique will be beneficial in reducing the witness’ use of their prior knowledge and expectations. It will provide a reliable means to investigate the effectiveness of using cognitive interviews. The cognitive interview is expected to lead to better memory for events as compared to the standard interview (Ewdard & Michael, 2013). It will enhance the set of discrete techniques rather than a general procedure, and this will go a long way in achieving the intended results.
Eyewitness’ memory on the criminal events they experienced can be enhanced through different approaches incorporated in cognitive interviews. The four different research designs: the action research design, case study design, causal design and descriptive design can be used to research to ascertain this. I believe the action research design is the best approach for this research topic since it makes it possible to take into consideration all the details and of the events that took place at the time of the crime. It also makes it possible to exhaust all the possible features and variables involved in the investigation of the crime.
References
Collins, D. (2015). Cognitive Interviewing Practice. Los Anngeles: SAGE.
Cutshall J. (2016). A case study of eyewitness memory of a crime. Journal of Applied Psychology, 291-301.
Edward, G. (2016). Eyewitness memory enhancement in the police interview: Cognitive retrieval mnemonics versus hypnosis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 401-412.
Edward, G. R., & Michael, A. (2013). Field test of the cognitive interview: Enhancing the recollection of actual victims and witnesses of crime. Journal of Applied Psychoogy, 722-727.
Experimental Zaragoza M., (2014). Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory. Journal of Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 934-945.
Fisher, R. (2012). Memory Enhancing Techniques for Investigative Interviewing: the Cognitive Interview. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher.
Geiselman, R. E., Esther, R. P., & Holland, D. P. (2011). Enhancement of Eyewitness Memory with the Cogntive Interview. The American Journal of Psycchology, 385-401.
Kiernam, M. E. (2015). A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory. Law and Human Behavior, 687-706.
Miller, K. (2014). Cognitive interviewing methodology. Hoboken: Wiley.
Ridley, A. M., & Gabbert, F. (2012). Suggestibility in legal contexts: psychological research and forensic implications. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
