Cognitive Interview

• Cognitive Interview: A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories. It uses four main techniques- report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order and the change perspective.
• Who was it created by?

  Fisher and Geiselman (1992)
• Report everything

  Witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event no matter how trivial it seems. These may trigger more important memories.
• Reinstate the context

  They should return to the original scene in their mind, imagine the environment and their emotions. This is related to context-dependent forgetting.
• Reverse the order

  Events should be recalled in a different order to the original sequence. This is done to prevent people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events. It also prevents dishonesty.
• Change perspective

  They should recall the incident from someone else's perspective, this is done to limit the recall of expectation of what should happen. It also disrupts the role of a schema, what should happen when you walk into a shop for example.