improving accuracy of the EWT - cognitive interview

• issues with the standard police interview

  • police give more input than the eyewitness
  • question require forced answers that discourage extra information
  • questions are asked that reinstate the police officer's beliefs about the crime, affecting the EWT
• mental reinstatement of the original context

  • asks the eyewitness to recreate the physical and psychological environment of the original incident
  • this makes the memories more accessible
  • they get more appropriate emotional and contextual cues to retrieve the information
• report everything

  • encouraged to report every single detail of the event, even if it seems irrelevant
  • memories are interconnected with on another so recollection of one thing may allow you to remember a lot of others
  • small details may also be pieced together from different witnesses to form a clear picture of the event
• change order

  • may try alternative ways through the timeline of the event so our recollections are influence by schemas
  • starting the events backwards means that your pre-existing schema doesn't influence what you say at recall
• change perspective

  • asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives
  • this disrupts the affect of schemas at recall
• enhanced cognitive interview

  • encourage individuals to relax and speak slowly
  • offer comments to help clarify the witnesses statements
  • adapt questions to suit the witness's understanding
• evaluation - Anderson and Pichert (1978)

  • recalling an incident from different perspective.
  • They asked participants to read a story about kids skiving from school.
  • They were randomly allocated into 1 of 2 conditions (imagining from a house buyers perspective or imagining it from a burglar’s perspective).
  • The details varied depending on which perspective they took.
  • When they were asked to recall the story again from the other condition’s perspective, they recalled new information.
  • ethical issue because they were not told what they were agreeing to participate in
  • high internal validity because they can control the variables within the study. reduces how generalisable it is because it isn’t a real-life situation meaning that it reduces the external validity and might induce demand characteristics
• evaluation

  • Kohnken et al. combined data from 50 studies. The enhanced CI consistently provided more correct information than the standard interview used by police (81% increase in correct information).
  • Studies of the effectiveness of the CI use slightly different variations of the CI and some use the enhanced CI.
  • Kohnken et al. found a 61% increase in the amount of incorrect information when the enhanced CI was used compared to the standard interview
  • Police may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes much more time than the standard police interview. The CI also requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours.
  • Fisher (1996) – older people (mean age-72) recalled more information from CI than younger people (mean age- 22).