Cognitive interview techniques

• Report everything - even seemingly insignificant pieces of information can act as cues for larger more significant events, helping prevent retrieval failure
• Reinstate the context - recalling weather, location and mood prevents context dependent forgetting.
• .Change the perspective - prevents eyewitnesses' accounts being affected by their own pre conceived perception of what happened. (e.g from another witness pov)
• Reverse the order - as it reduces the witness's ability to lie, because it is simply harder. (e.g non chronological)
• Support for the CI comes from a meta analysis of 53 studies which found an average of 34% of correct info recalled using the basic cognitive interview compared to standard interviewing techniques
• Research has found that the cognitive interview not only leads to higher amounts of correct recall, but also leads to higher amounts of incorrect recall.
• Kebbel surveyed police in the UK who used the cognitive interview and found that some officers were concerned about the amount of time it took to complete, and how long it took to train them.
• Researchers aren't actually sure which part of the CI is the part that leads to improved recall. E.g research has found that only using one part of the CI on its own may give no better EWT than a standard interview, but combining two or more of the techniques seems to lead to more accurate recall.