On the 8th of January the department PCRS organized an inspiring guest lecture by Dr. Kate Houston of the Investigative Interviewing Laboratory of the University of Texas at El Paso (USA). Kate discussed two of her research areas. One following up on her PhD (2011 from the University of Aberdeen, UK) and consisting of a series of experiments investigating the possible role of negative emotion, specifically anger, on eyewitness memory recall and recognition performance. More recently, Kate’s post-doctoral work at the University of Texas at El Paso focuses on best practices during investigative interviews with suspects and witnesses, with a particular focus on intelligence interviews. Kate’s research in this area is working towards building a psychological model of investigative interviewing that can help inform interview strategies and to predict motivations that individuals may have to resist or comply with an interviewer.
