The Cognitive interview - improving accuracy of EWT

• cognitive interview: a technique used by police to interview witnesses that encourages them to recall the context of a crime by mentally recreating it.
• the cognitive interview is divided into four components: mental reinstatement of original context, report everything, change order and change perspective.
• mental reinstatement of original context: where the interviewer encourages the witness to mentally recreate the physical and psychological environment of the event. this provides contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memory.
• report everything: when a witness is asked to recall everything they remember from an event in detail, regardless if it seems irrelevant. this is because memories can become interlinked so small details could be missed out.
• change order: the witness is asked to switch the chronology of the event, recalling each key moment in reverse. this reduces the effect that schemas have on recollection.
• change perspective: a witness is asked to recall the event from multiple different perspectives. this reduces the effect of mental schemas also.
• Strengths of the cognitive interview: research support, Milne and Bill found that ppts interviewed using ’report everything‘ and ‘mental reinstatement’ techniques, they were more successful in recalling events than with the control condition - just told to try again. Suggests that the CI is effective for accessibility of info from memory.
• limitation of cognitive interview: criticism due to its dependence on quantity of research data than quality. it is designed to enhance the quantity of information accessed - meaning that police need to be cautious with info gathered by CI, as quality is not guaranteed.
• strength of cognitive interview: the CI takes individual differences into account. reduces harmful stereotypes of older ppts having declining memory as the report everything technique takes all info into account regardless of significance. this suggests that individual differences do matter, and CI is effective.