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Use and Effectiveness of Hypnosis and the Cognitive Interview for Enhancing Eyewitness Recall: Philadelphia, 1988-1989

Metadata Updated: November 28, 2023

This study investigated the effectiveness of hypnosis and the cognitive interview (a technique for stimulating memory) on the recall of events in a criminal incident. The data collected in the study address the following questions: (1) Does hypnosis or the cognitive interview mitigate recall deficits that result from emotionally upsetting events? (2) Does hypnosis or the cognitive interview improve recall when individuals recall events in narrative fashion? (3) Does hypnosis or the cognitive interview improve recall when individuals are required to respond to each item in a set of focused questions? (4) Does the cognitive interview improve recall better than motivated control recall procedures? For this two-stage study, subjects were randomly assigned to receive hypnosis, cognitive interview, or control treatment. Stage 1 involved completing unrelated questionnaires and viewing a short film containing an emotionally upsetting criminal event. Stage 2 was conducted 3 to 13 days later (the average was 6.5 days) and involved baseline information gathering about the events in the film, application of the assigned treatment, and post-treatment written recall of the events. Data were collected from the written narratives provided by subjects and from an oral forced recall of events in a post-experimental interview. Variables in File 1 include total information (correct, incorrect, confabulations, and attributions) as well as new information given in the post-treatment written narrative. The remaining variables in File 1 include score on Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A), repressor status, and the number of days between viewing the film and completing the baseline and post-treatment interviews. Variables in File 2 were derived from the post-experimental oral forced recall interview and include total correct and incorrect responses and confidence ratings for correct and incorrect responses. The unit of observation is the individual.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: us-pd

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023
Publisher National Institute of Justice
Maintainer
Identifier 3599
Data First Published 1991-03-05T00:00:00
Language eng
Data Last Modified 2006-03-30T00:00:00
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 011:21
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 979eeb7e-7d4c-415a-80ce-4626b89af726
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Program Code 011:060
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > National Institute of Justice
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 75546199ff06af10a886a4541e417497a4011aa21203df16676a566800d3fa2d
Source Schema Version 1.1

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