Cognitive Interview

• Four parts of the cognitive interview


  • Context reinstatement
  • Report Everything
  • Change perspective
  • Reverse Order
• CR


  Context Reinstatement

  • Mentally recreating the environment from the original incident (e.g. weather / mood / purpose) to trigger useful information
• RE


  Report Everything

  • Including every detail of the event even if it seems irrelevant to trigger useful information
• CP

  Change Perspective

  • Recalling event from multiple perspectives (e.g. imagining point of view from other witnesses) to trigger useful infomration
• RO

  Reverse Order

  • Reversing order in which events occurred, varying route through memory to increase recall and check for truth
• Cognitive interview effectiveness with age


  Below 6: Often struggle in the interview due to the complex nature of some questions

  Elderly: Wright & Holliday (2007) investigated age with recall, found that they recalled significantly greater detail without giving false information
• Support for CI


  KonKen et al meta-analysis (1999) found 41% increase in amount of correct information generated in cognitive interviews

  Milne & Bull (2002) found that RE + CR had especially higher recall
• Real world issues with police in CI


  Interviewer has to 'probe' effectively

  Effective training will take more time and money

  Mainly use RE + CR
• Chances of 'false positives' in CI


  Kohnken (1999) found an 81% increase in accurate information but also an 61% increase in inaccurate information