The cognitive interview

• What is the standard interview ?

  Revolves around the interviewer (police), asks specific questions with request forced responses, witnesses may be interviewed anywhere at any time.
• What is the cognitive interview ?

  • takes place at a police station (calm environment, moderate anxiety- high at crime scene)
  • Recorded
  • Interviewee does most of the talking
  • Links to the inverted U theory
• What is stage one of the CI

  • Report Everything -> “no , matter how small or irrelevant”
  • Interviewer is not to interrupt (don't disrupt chain of thought)
  • The smaller details act as a bridge to connect all the information correctly
  • No leading questions -links to loftus and palmers study about misleading info
• What is stage two of the CI?

  • Mental Reinstatement ->
  • Visualise yourself back at the incident + describe what happened?
  • Recreates context/ state cues = unlocks more information
  • Links to retrieval failure (Godden and Baddley AO3)
• What is the third stage of CI ?

  • change order -> recall from e.g. the end of the incident and work your way back to the start
  • Allows us to access the memory using different paths to stop the memory getting disturbed.
• What is the fourth stage of the CI?


  • Change perspective
  • “What would the lady on the opposite side of the street have seen?”
  • Asks witness to think what someone else may have seen, this unlocks cues
  • Provides a holistic account and verifies information.
• What is meant by the Enhanced CI?

  • factors added to make the interview process better :
  • When to use eye contact
  • Importance of minimising distractions
  • Only use open questions
• One strength and one linking weakness of the cognitive interview?

  • 34% increase in accurate information compared to the standard interview BUT 81% more inaccurate information obtained than the standard interview.
  • Police need to take caution on what they use
• Strength of the CI?

  More useful for elderly and younger witnesses than the SI due to “report everything…” older people more confident to come forward to give evidence.
• Weaknesses of the CI?

  • time consuming -> takes more poilice time to conduct than the SI, police time is already restricted.
  • Cost -> police need to be trained to use CI but not SI.
  • Hard to establish overall effectiveness of the CI as police forces use different versions of the CI