Open Ended Questions

After watching the videos on the impact of questioning an eyewitness, it is safe to say that you can never rely one hundred percent on what a witness says. There are multiple different ways a person remembers information, and one example is that people will relate new information to previous events that have already been stored in memory. This can cause a problem to arise when taking statements from witnesses because what they state they saw can be something that they made up from past information. Another unreliable fact of memory is that it can be distorted by drawing similarities from other scenarios or people that the witness had been in contact with. Lastly, a person can remember information through the imagination, where the mind sees …show more content…
Interview questions also play a big part in false accusations. This occurs from being asked both open-ended and closed questions. When looking at open-ended questions, the form of the question allows the person’s mind to wander and think about what they saw. This can sometimes be a negative thing because it allows the imagination to roam over other possibilities of what they saw. However, it may also be a positive, because it allows the person to tell the whole story of what they saw, and give details that you may not think to ask about. Open-ended questions also allow the person to vent, and by doing so, it may eliminate any emotion that may be prohibiting new information from being remembered and told. I have also learned that when using open-ended questions, you do not want to lead the interviewee to …show more content…
During this time, the focus is to listen and encourage the interviewee that what they are saying is being heard. Is also helps the investigator with getting clarification during an interview. Another thing that I learned was that open-ended questions help the interviewer form an understanding of how the person being interviewed will respond to certain questions. It allows the investigator to observe the non-verbal communication and assess it for further questions in the interview.Closed QuestionsWhen looking at closed questions, this form of question forces the interviewee to answer specific questions. It goes straight to the point and has a limited choice of answers. I learned that is it used at the beginning to make the interviewee comfortable and gives the interviewer a better understanding of how the person acts when answering questions truthfully or in confidence. An example of this would be asking what is the person’s date of birth, or their full name. You must be careful when asking closed questions; however, because you may force the person to answer a question where what they witnessed was not an option. Closed questions can also interfere with a person’s reconstruction of what occurred, and prevent certain details from being remembered. Wording of QuestionsI also learned that you must be careful with how you word a question because it can be just a simple switch of a word in a

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