LSAT 150, Section 1, RC Passage 2, Eyewitness Interviews

RC Passage 2 Explanation

PASSAGE TEXT: When interviewing witnesses to a crime, police interviewers seek to maximize the amount …

Paragraph Summaries

1. Police want witness interviews to produce as much useful information as possible. The cognitive interview is one method for getting witnesses to recall more details.
2. The cognitive interview improves recall without increasing errors much, but it’s complex, time-consuming, and requires training that officers don’t always receive or follow.
3. Hypnosis is simpler than the cognitive interview, but it doesn’t reliably improve accuracy and may make witnesses falsely confident. It also doesn’t work on all witnesses.
4. Instructed eye-closure may offer the benefits police want: better recall, no increase in errors, no special training, and no issue with hypnotic susceptibility.

Analysis

The clear winner here is eye closure.

The whole passage is organized around the ideal police interview method. It should get more correct details, avoid more false details, work on basically everyone, and be easy for officers to use.

Cognitive interview is effective but impractical. Hypnosis is simpler but unreliable. Eye-closure borrows a useful piece from both and seems to avoid their main problems.

There’s a difference between just getting more info from witnesses vs. getting more accurate info. The cognitive interview increases details but doesn’t really improve overall accuracy. Hypnosis may increase confidence without accuracy. Eye-closure is attractive because it improves recall without adding errors.

The false-confidence point is only about hypnosis. Don’t accidentally attach it to eye-closure.