阅读理解。
Some years ago, a Miami woman walking through an office building noticed two men standing together.
Several minutes after her leaving, the men murdered a person working in the building. The police determined
that the woman was the only witness and could possibly describe them. However, her memory of the men
proved disappointingly unclear. Several days later, psychologist Ronald Fisher was brought in to obtain a
more complete account from the woman. His interview produced a breakthrough-the woman reported a clear
picture of one of the suspects. The important information enabled the police to arrest the suspect and close
the case.
The police asked Fisher for help because of his rich knowledge in cognitive (认知的) interview, a kind of
memory-rebuilding process. Memory researchers have found that people trying to remember a past event often
only recall part of the relevant information. Human memory is selective and it is often distorted by stress. But
a person's accurate recall of an event or understanding of a question can be improved using specific
interviewing techniques. The "cognitive interview" was developed in the late 1990s. It encourages the witness
to take an active role in recalling information rather than giving answers only to someone else's questions.
The witness first describes what happened in his or her own words, with no interviewer interruptions. The
interviewer then goes further with specific techniques, such as having the witness tell the detail', of what
happened from different perspectives (角度).
The cognitive interview focuses on guiding witnesses through four general recalling techniques: thinking
about physical surroundings and personal feelings that existed at the time of past events; reporting everything
that comes to mind about those events, no matter how broken it is; retelling events in a variety of time orders,
such as from beginning to end, end to beginning, forward or backward; and adopting different perspectives
while recalling events.
Experiments with police detectives trained in this demanding interview method find that they obtain nearly
50% more information from witnesses than before training, while error rates remain about the same. It is
proved that cognitive interviews are quite important tools in improving the accuracy and completeness of
witness testimony (证词).
1. The purpose of the passage is to _____.
A. give an account of a murder case
B. help a witness to recall information in a cognitive interview
C. prove Fisher was an expert in cognitive interview
D. introduce an idea of cognitive interview
2. What is required to recall in a cognitive interview for a witness?
A. The surroundings and feelings at the time of the event.
B. The information about the event in the time order.
C. The important things that come to his or her mind.
D. The exact time at which a murder took place.
3. The key point in a cognitive interview is that _____.
A. the interview should take place outside the police station
B. the interviewer should interrupt the witness from time to time
C. the witness is encouraged to take part in recalling information
D. the witness should recall details at the scene of the event
4. The underlined word "distorted" in the passage probably means "_____."
A. changed
B. balanced
C. arranged
D. examined
