AO1 - Improving Eyewitness Testimony

• The cognitive interview involves techniques such as mentally reinstating the context of the crime, considering different perspectives, recounting the incident in a different narrative order, and reporting every detail.
• A study by Geiselman et al (1985) found that the cognitive interview led to better memory recall compared to standard interviews and hypnosis.
• Cognitive interview is a questioning technique used by the police to enhance retrieval of information from the witnesses’ memory.
• The interviewer will ask witnesses to mentally reinstate the environmental and personal context of the crime scene.
• Witnesses are asked to report the incident from different perspectives.
• Witnesses are asked to recount the incident in a different narrative order.
• Geiselman & Fisher proposed that due to the recency effect, people tend to recall more recent events more clearly than others.
• Witnesses are asked to report every detail, even if they think that detail is trivial.
• Geiselman et al (1985) compared the cognitive interview with a standard police interview and hypnosis.
• Geiselman et al (1985) found the average number of correctly recalled facts for the cognitive interview was 41.2, but for hypnosis it was 38.0 and for a standard interview it was 29.4.
• The cognitive interview leads to better memory for events, with witnesses able to recall more relevant information compared with a traditional interview method.
• The enhanced cognitive interview devised by Fisher et al (1987) added detail to focus on the social dynamics of the interview interaction.