EWT - cognitive interview

• The cognitive interview is a police techniques for interviewing eye witnesses which encourages them to recreate the original context to increase the accessibility of stored memories
• There are 4 stages to the cognitive interview

  1. report everything
  2. reinstatement of context
  3. change order
  4. change perspective
• report everything -

  • Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of an event, even if it seems irrelevant
  • Trivial things could trigger other memories
• reinstate context -

  • Witness imagines the crime scene and is asked to report everything they saw and felt
  • Based on context and state dependent forgetting (cues)
• reverse order -

  • Events are recalled in a different order e.g in reverse
  • Prevents expectations of how the events happened rather than the actual events
• change perspective -

  • Witnesses recall the incident from other perspective e.g. how it would have appeared from another witness/perpetrator
  • Prevents the influence of expectation on recall
• Fisher developed some additions to the cognitive interview to focus on the social interaction

  e.g

  • the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it
  • getting the witness to speak more slowly
  • asking open ended questions
• strength -

  Research has found that each element of the CI is equally valuable and a combination of ‘report everything’ and ‘context reinstatement’ produced better recall.

  The CI is effective in improving the accuracy of eye witness testimonies
• strength -

  A meta-analysis combined data from 50 studies showed the enhance CI consistently provided more correct information than the standard interview used by police.

  There are real practical benefits to the police of using the enhanced version of the CI
• weakness -

  police can be reluctant to use the CI as it is time consuming and requires special training to conduct.

  It is therefore unlikely that the ‘proper’ version of the CI is actually used.
• weakness -

  Studies on the CI likely use slightly different techniques e.g. the CI vs the enhanced CI vs police evolving their own methods

  It is difficult to draw conclusions about the CI in general as there is such a range in delivery techniques