PrepTest 150

[lcid:3696] Prep Test 150 LSAT — Reading Comp — S1 Reading comp

Passage

Questions 6-13  .       When interviewing witnesses to a crime, police  . interviewers seek to maximize the amount of  . information Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage Summary

Topic: Legal


Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • Background on the purpose of eyewitness interview, cognitive interview
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • List of methods to interview eyewitnesses, item 1:
      • Cognitive interview (last sentence)

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • Cognitive interview evaluation
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • Although the cognitive interview increases the number of accurate details eyewitnesses recall without increasing the number of inaccurate recollections, it is complex and requires substantial training (second and third sentence)
    • Example of technique to improve recall in the cognitive interview:
      • Multiple retrieval attempts (first sentence)
    • Examples of techniques developed by social psychologists in the cognitive interview:
      • Conversation-management skills and techniques for building rapport (first sentence)
    • Cause-and-effect relationship:
      • The complexity of cognitive interviews causes some officers to not receive training and other officers to deviate from procedures (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "known to improve recall" (first sentence); "general consensus" (second sentence); "proven successful" (second sentence); "little impact on the number of incorrect details" (second sentence); "problem" (third sentence); "complex" (third sentence); "substantial training" (third sentence)

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • Hypnosis evaluation
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • List of methods to interview eyewitnesses, item 2:
      • Hypnosis (first sentence)
    • Definition of "false confidence" effect: Effect in which witnesses are more confident in their reports, including inaccurate reports (fifth sentence)
    • Author's view:
      • Hypnosis is less complicated than cognitive interviews, but it does not improve the accuracy of witnesses' responses; sometimes, it even decreases accuracy, leads to "false confidence," and won't work on the interviewee (third through last sentences)
    • Cause-and-effect relationships:
      • Hypnosis can cause less accurate reports and false confidence in eyewitnesses (third and fourth sentences)
    • Author's atttidue: "not generally improved" (third sentence); "deterioate" (third sentence); "practical difficulties" (last sentence); "most notably" (last sentence)

Paragraph 4

  • Paragraph note
    • Author's advocacy for instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • List of methods to interview eyewitnesses, item 3:
      • Instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes (third sentence)
    • Author's view:
      • The ideal method for interviewing eyewitnesses would require no special training, work for any potential eyewitness, and improve recall without increasing errors; instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes has these characteristics (first through last sentence)
    • Cause-and-effect relationship:
      • Instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes can cause witnesses to better remember visual and auditory materials (including video and events witnessed through live interactions) (fourth sentence)
    • Comparison between instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes and hypnotic technique:
      • Instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes helps eyewitnesses recall more details than hypnosis and works on more people than hypnosis (fifth sentence)
    • Comparison between instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes and cognitive interview:
      • Equally good in improving eyewitnesses' ability to remember, but instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes is easier to implement (sixth and last sentences)
    • Author's attitude: "ideal method" (first sentence); "may in fact" (second sentence); "demonstrate" (fourth sentence); "benefit recall" (fourth sentence); "indicate an improvement over hypnotic interviewing" (fifth sentence); "no problems" (fifth sentence); "More significantly" (sixth sentence)

Main Point: Instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes is the ideal interview method for police interviews because it improves eyewitness recall more than hypnosis and with less specialized training than the cognitive interview.

Key Lines?

Paragraph 2, Sentences 2-3 (P2, S2-3) - Evaluation of cognitive interview

P3, S3-5 - Evaluation of hypnosis

P4, S4-7 - Recommends instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes

Meta-Structure?

Problem/Solution: We think this passage best fits the Problem/Solution Meta-Structure. That said, this passage doesn't clearly embody any of the Meta-Structures. One could convincingly argue that this was a Resolving a Debate, an Old Approach/New Approach passage, or a Correcting the Record passage. Ultimately, we settled on Problem/Solution because the author defines a problem in the first sentences of the first and last paragraphs and a solution in the last paragraph. The problem is that in eyewitness interviews, investigators want to maximize the amount of information they can elicit (P1, S1), using a technique that doesn't require significant training but yields reliable results from any potential eyewitness (P4, S1). And the solution is, simply enough, to instruct eyewitnesses to close their eyes during the interview (P4, S3-7).

The main point in a Problem/Solution passage is typically the solution the author proffers or endorses. So, here's how we defined the main point: "Instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes is the ideal interview method for police interviews because it improves eyewitness recall more than hypnosis and with less specialized training than the cognitive interview."

Comparisons: This passage makes liberal use of all the minor Meta-Structures, but comparisons are the most prominent. In fact, the comparisons between the three interview techniques are so prevalent that we incorporated these comparisons into our main point. This passage’s many comparisons are enumerated in the Passage Summary, above. 

Last Thoughts?

As we mentioned in the Meta-Structure section, this passage is teeming with comparisons. So many, in fact, that we should expect several questions that test our understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each interview technique. If you feel comfortable memorizing a few comparisons, that can save you a lot of time as you progress through the questions. (If you don’t feel confident memorizing these, that’s OK too. You can always check the passage to answer the questions, especially if you use your notes and highlights/underliens to review the passage efficiently.) In case you want to memorize these facts, we've listed out a few notes to clarify the relative strengths and weaknesses of each approach:

  • The cognitive interview produces more accurate results than hypnosis but requires specialized training.
  • Hypnosis produces less accurate results than the cognitive interview and instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes, but its techniques are less complex than the cognitive interview. However, it works on fewer people than the cognitive interview and eye closing.
  • Instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes produces equally accurate results as the cognitive interview and more accurate results than hypnosis, but its training and techniques are easier than the cognitive interview, and it works on more people than hypnosis.

Question prompt

The author would be Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: B

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Legal

Strategy Overview

Review the main point, and use notes or highlighted/underlined text in the passage to recall the author's attitude, and find the answer that best reflects your understanding of the main point/author's attitude

Answer Anticipation

This question asks us about the author's view, but doesn't provide any insight into the topic of the correct answer or where the supporting information might show up in the passage. This means the correct answer is likely to relate back to the author's main point. As such, we'll need to rely on our big-picture understanding of the passage to answer this question. We should start by reminding ourselves of the main point (either by reviewing what we said after reading the passage or by re-reading our answer to the main point question). We can also review any notes about the author's attitude or any text we highlighted because it expressed the author's opinion. After doing that, we can head to the answer choices, tabling those that don't line up with the main point. For those answer choices that conform to the author's main point, we'll use our notes and the passage to see if it's correct.

Answer choices

  1. A
    If all witnesses were Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited

    (A) Does this seem consistent with the main point or what you recall about the author's attitude?

    No, this is inconsistent with the author's main point. The author concluded, "Instructing eyewitnesses to close their eyes is the ideal interview method for police interviews because it improves eyewitness recall more than hypnosis and with less specialized training than the cognitive interview." Even if all witnesses were susceptible to hypnosis, the author would still argue that the instructed eye-closure technique produced more accurate results. Therefore, we should feel comfortable eliminating (A).

  2. B
    Even if police forces Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B matches the stem

    (B) Does this seem consistent with the main point or what you recall about the author's attitude?

    Yes, this is very much aligned with the author's main point. As the author concludes, the instructed eye-closure method is better than the cognitive interview because instructed eye-closure is much less complex. So we have reason to believe that the author would agree that the complexity of the cognitive interview would pose problems even if officers received adequate training. Therefore, we should review the passage to see if the author would agree with this.

    The author discusses the cognitive interview in the second paragraph. At the end of that paragraph, the author says that the cognitive interview's techniques are so complex that "even trained officers often deviate from the procedures specified in the cognitive interview training" (P2, S4). This supports (B). Even if the police forces had the time and resources to train all the officers on the cognitive interview, officers still might deviate from the procedure and produce unreliable results. Since we can find text that shows that the author would almost certainly agree with (B), we can select it without evaluating the remaining answer choices.

  3. C
    Instructed eye-closure should be Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) Does this seem consistent with the main point or what you recall about the author's attitude?

    No, this is not consistent with the author's main point. The author held that the instructed eye-closure method is preferable to the cognitive interview because eye closure requires less training and because the two methods produce comparable results. So, the author doesn't think that eye closure should be adopted only if police forces lack the resources to implement the cognitive interview. The author would prefer the instructed eye-closure method irrespective of the available resources.

  4. D
    Interview procedures that are Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited

    (D) Does this seem consistent with the main point or what you recall about the author's attitude?

    Not quite. This is inconsistent with the main point. The author concludes that the instructed eye-closure method is preferable to the cognitive interview because eye closure requires less training and produces comparable results. The author doesn't say that instructed eye-closure produces "a greater amount of accurate information" than the cognitive interview. This also contradicts the author's comparison between the cognitive interview and hypnosis. The author says the cognitive interview produces more accurate results than hypnosis, even if the cognitive interview is more difficult to learn. We should feel confident that (D) is wrong and should be eliminated.

  5. E
    The more information a Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) Does this seem consistent with the main point or what you recall about the author's attitude?

    Probably not. If we need to review the "false confidence" effect in the passage, we'd see that it occurs when a cooperating witness is subjected to the hypnotic interviewing technique (P3, S4). The author never says the number of details the witness divulges is correlated with the likelihood the witness is experiencing "false confidence."

What this tests

Discussion

  • D wrong? 4 replies

    Started by lxnxrd19

  • D v. B 1 reply

    Started by tayloryork

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