cognitive interview

• standard police interviews?

  • orientation, purpose of interview is stated and legal requirements fulfilled (informing interviewee of rights)
  • listening, free recall of events
  • questions and answers, interviewer asks specific questions based on previous stage to fill in gaps and obtain additional information
  • advice, interviewee is informed of any further action
• what is wrong with standard police interviews?

  criticised for being ineffective, witnessed often interrupted. report by Baldwin (1993), police used coercion and oppressive interviewing procedures leading to false confessions

  • led to PACE, police and criminal evidence act (1984) offering police an ethical code of practice to follow. PACE act leads to development of PEACE model, guidelines recommended to interview.
• PEACE model?

  P: planning and preparation, clear objectives should be seen.

  E: engage and explain, establish rapport (mutual trust in a relationship). purpose of interview should be explained ensuring they know their rights.

  A: account, good questioning and listening skills are needed.

  C: closure, interviewee needs to understand what happened during interview and the next steps (keeps good rapport).

  E: evaluate, reflection of interviewers performance. see if they can learn from any mistakes and whether suspect was treated fairly
• strengths of PEACE model?

  • Walsh and Milne (2010), evidence to show it builds rapprt and more ethical techniques are seen.
  • builds public confidence in ensuring fewer miscarriages of justice are seen
• weaknesses of PEACE model?

  • isn't always used consistently so effectiveness is limited
  • expensive to train police in this technique
• what cognitive principles does cognitive interview rely on?

  1. Tulvings encoding specificity principle. when an event occurs it is first encoded and other important cues are stored alongside it (sensory details). being reminded of these context cues may mean a more accurate recall
  2. Bartletts schema theory, schemas for certain events like bank robbery means our memory will be more focused on what we expect to happen and not what actually happened.
• 4 main techniques in cognitive interview?

  1. context reinstatement: recall sensory cues to mentally put the person back in the situation.
  2. report everything: freely recall then further questions asked for more information (unimportant data could be key information)
  3. change order of event recalled: recall an event in reverse order to interrupt schema activation.
  4. change perspective: act from a different point of view using different retrieval cues.
• Geiselman (1985)?

  lab experiment with 3 interview techniques. used 89 undergraduate students randomly assigned to 3 interview methods (standard police, hypnosis, cognitive). watched violent film then asked about it.

  R/C: significant increase in number of correct items recalled using cognitive. difference in interviews for confabulated items (made up) weren't statistically significant. concluded increased retrieval using cognitive interview is due to guided approach for interviewing. They recalled more info but it wasn't more accurate than standard police.
• evidence to support cognitive interview?

  • Fisher (1990), Miami Police Dept. detectives showed 46% increase in recall over standard interviews with 90% accuracy. (effective IRL too!)
  • Bekerian and Dennet (1993), reviewed 27 studies into effectiveness of cognitive interview, more accurate info than other interview techniques
  • Milne and Bull (2002), cognitive reinstatement and report everything in combination id particularly effective for eliciting info
• Holliday (2003)?

  children aged 5-9 shown a video of a childrens birthday party and interviewed the next day using cognitive and standard interview. cognitive yielded more correct details about the video so it's useful when interviewing children too
• evidence against cognitive interview?

  • Geiselmann (1999), children under 6 had decrease of accuracy of recall. Cognitive interview should only be used with 8 year olds above. young children could find the instructions confusing.
  • Kohnken (1999), 81% increase in correct info using cognitive, but offset by 61% incorrect information. it produces more incorrect aswell as correct information.

  can also be time consuming! specialist training can be costly and untrained interviewers can produce more errors than standard