cognitive interview

• what is cognitive interview? 


  a technique used by the police to improve the accuracy of EWT by recreating the original context and therefore accessibility to info stored
• who developed CI?

  Fisher and Geiselman
• what did Fisher and Geiselman (1992) do? 


  studied interviews by detectives and found people remembered more with retrieval cues, less when bombarded with closed questions and sequencing was often out of sync with interviewees train of thought. they developed CI based on psychological principles
• what are the 4 techniques of CI? (explain) 


  report everything (even trivial details to trigger other parts), reinstate the context (imagine the environment and detail the mental state), reverse the order (end to start, from a different point), change perspective (put them in someone else’s shoes)
• why is each CI technique used? 


  report everything- ensure no assumptions have been made about what info is important

  reinstate the context- state/ context dependant forgetting

  reverse the order- breaks down schema, catch out intentional liars

  change perspective- establishes who was at the scene, disrupts schema
• what is the enhanced CI? 


  developed by Fisher to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction: when to use eye contact, how to reduce witness anxiety, minimise distractions, what type of questions to use, get witness to speak slowly and clearly