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

Metadata Updated: March 12, 2025

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 March 12, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date March 12, 2025
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
Aicategory Not AI-ready
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 854078cf-09f9-4748-9464-f95060205a40
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
Internalcontactpoint {"@type": "vcard:Contact", "fn": "Jennifer Scherer", "hasEmail": "mailto:Jennifer.Scherer@usdoj.gov"}
Jcamsystem {"acronym": "OJP_EXT", "id": 8, "name": "External system not available in CSAM"}
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Metadatamodified 9/2/2022 6:22:00 PM
Program Code 011:060
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > National Institute of Justice
Sourceidentifier https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09478
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash ebd4b7be8901897b0a320fe3ab29dcb849f1f10e448eee8839a6b3ab62c59f5c
Source Schema Version 1.1

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