Wynne Incident Analysis Paper

Within the study, 136 residents of the Wynne Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice witnessed a staged theft and provided testimony to the incident (Colwell et al, 2002). The interview consisted of scripts derived from Structured, Cognitive, and Inferential Interview techniques. Participants were assigned randomly to one of the three interview techniques and were measured on their honesty and dishonesty to the questions obtained. Participants randomly assigned to the honest group were instructed to report everything about the incident as truthful as possible. Participants in the dishonest group were instructed to distort the testimony from the honest group to debar the conviction of the staged perpetrator. The interviews were held individually for a duration of one hour and were recorded and videotaped (Colwell et al, 2002). The role of the interviewers was to accurately identify participants who were giving fabricated statements and honest statements.
The participants were measured by (1) Coherence defined as does the statement make sense and not contradict itself? If so, then it is coherent. Furthermore, (2) Response length defined as the total number of words in a statement, (3) Type-Token Ratio defined as unique words divided by total words in a statement and (4) Verbal Hedges defined
Reverse recall and change perceptions are two of the techniques used within a Cognitive Interview. The reverse recall technique is used to increase the cognitive loading of the interviewee. An increase in cognitive loading creates difficulty for the interviewee to successfully lie since lying requires a significant amount of cognitive loading. However, the interviewer must have the interviewee chronologically recall the event first. The change perception technique is used to have the interviewee perceive the incident from the perspective of others at the