The cognitive interview

• The cognitive interview

  -The CI is a police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime, which encourages them to recreate the original context of the crime in order to increase the accessibility of stored information.

  -Because our memory is made up of a network of associations rather than discrete events, memories are accessed using multiple retrieval strategies.
• Standard Police interview-

  -Fisher et al (1987) studied real life interviews by detective officers in Florida over 4 month period.​

  -They found that witnesses were frequently bombarded with a series of brief, direct and close-ended questions aimed to elicit facts.​

  -However, the sequencing of these questions often seemed to be out of sync with the witnesses’ own mental representation of the event.​

  -Witnesses were often interrupted and not allowed to talk freely about their experiences.
• Who developed the cognitive interview?

  -Geiselman 1984
• What are the 4 key features of the cognitive interview?

  1.Mental reinstatement of original context

  2.Report everything

  3.Change order

  4.Change perspective
• 1.Mental reinstatement of original context-

  -Witness is encouraged to recreate both physical and psychological environment at the time.

  -This provides appropriate contextual and emotional cues and to make memories more accessible
• 2.Report everything

  -Encourages witness to report every single detail they can remember

  -Witness should not leave out anything, even if they believe it is irrelevant

  -Because memories are interconnected, could be that one detail is a cue to recollecting even more information
• 3.Change order

  -Interviewer may try alternative ways around the timeline of an event, e.g reversing the order

  -This is to try and prevent distortion due to your expectations of an event
• 4.Change perspective

  -Interviewee is asked to recall event from a variety of perspectives to imagine how it may have appeared to other people at the time

  -It is also done to disrupt the effect of schema
• Strength - Supporting evidence

  -Koehnken 1999 conducted a meta-analysis of 53 studies and found on average there was an increase of 34% of correct information generated by the CI compared to standard interview.
• Strength - Fisher

  -Fisher et al (1990) demonstrated the effectiveness of CI in a police setting in Miami.

  -They trained officers to use CI techniques when interviewing genuine witnesses and found that it produced a significant increase in recall.

  -Therefore this gives evidence that the technique works in the ‘real world’ and not just in experimental settings.
• Weakness- Elements of CL are more useful than others

  -However, Milne & Bull (2002) investigated how useful each component of the CI was and found the most effective parts of the technique was a combination of report everything and reinstatement.​

  -However, Thames Valley Police use a version of CI that does not include changing perspectives. Other forces only use report everything and reinstate context (Kebbell and Wagstaff, 1996).

  -Therefore, demonstrating that some elements of the CI are more useful than others.
• Weakness - Not widespread

  -However, there are limitations to use of CI in practice.

  -Many police forces report that technique requires more time than they have available and instead officers use deliberate strategies to limit an eye-witness report to minimum amount of information that officers feel is necessary.

  -CI requires specialist training and many forces can't provide more than few hours (Kebbell and Wagstaff, 1996). Therefore, for these reasons the use of CI has not been widespread.
• Strength - Older witnesses

  -In support, the CI may be of particular use when interviewing older witnesses. -Due to stereotypes about age and memory, older people are likely to be overly cautious about information they give.
• Weakness - Older witness (Mello and Fisher)

  -Mello and Fisher (1996) compared older(mean age 72 years) and younger (mean age 22 years) adults’ memory of a filmed simulated crime.

  -They were then interviewed using either standard interview or cognitive interview.

  -The CI did produce more information, but the advantage was more significant for the older group