cognitive interview

• cognitive interview 


  police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime, encourages them to recreate original context in order to increase accessibility of stored information
• why is cognitive interview important 


  • improve effectiveness of questioning witnesses in police interviews
  • apply findings of psychological findings to this area
• fisher + geiselman (1985)

  developed cognitive interview (CI) based on proven psychological principles concerning effective memory recall
• cognitive interview 


  1. report everything
  2. reinstatement of context
  3. reverse order (RO) (change order)
  4. change perspective (CP)
• report everything 


  encouraged to include every single detail, even if it seems irrelevant or witness doesnt feel confident

  may be important or trigger other important memories
• reinstatement of context 


  return to the original crime scene in their mind, and imagine the environment (e.g weather and emotions etc)

  relates to context- dependant forgetting
• reverse order 


  recall in reverse order- recalled in different order to original sequence, to prevent reporting of expectations rather than actual events.

  prevents dishonesty, as it is harder to produce untruthful accounts in reverse order
• change perspective 


  recall from the perspective of other people, to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall.

  schema you have a for a particular setting- generates expectations of what happened, so CP ensures event is recalled and not the schema
• report everything + context reinstatement 


  based on the principle that if there is consistency between the actual incident and the recreated situation, there is an increased likeliness that witnesses will recall more details and be more accurate in their detail
• change order + change perspective 


  based on the assumption that information has been observed can be through and number of different 'routes' in the individuals memory, so more productive to vary these routes during questioning
• changed order/ perspective 


  accesed through different routes
• enhanced cognitive interview - fisher (1987)


  • interviewer needs to know when to establish/ relinquish eye contact
  • need to reduce eye witness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and ask open ended questions
• cognitive interview (pros)

  • kohnken et al (1999) - found from meta analysis of 55 studies that CI and enganced CI provides more correct information compared to standard interview (44% improvement in accurate recall)
  • effective - mike + bull, found each technique improved accurate recall. combination of report everything and context reinstatement was most effective
• cognitive interview (cons)

  • time consuming - interview process longer than standard, required time for training. so it is likely that 'proper' CI is not always used
  • Kohnken- enhanced CI did improve accurate recall (84%) but also increased the amount of incorrect information being recalled (61%), this is known as false positives. CI sacrifices quality got quantity
  • difficult to compare data across the country, as different police forces have evolved slightly varied methods. cant compare like for like, when comparing forces using CI and those not
• enhanced CI


  social aspects