Improving the Accuracy of EWT: Cognitive Interview

• the Cognitive Interview (CI)

  a method of interviewing eyewitnesses to a crime to help them retrieve more accurate memories
• researchers who developed the CI

  Fisher and Geiselman et al. (1992)
• the four main techniques used in the CI

  • report/recall everything
  • context reinstatement
  • reverse the order
  • change perspective
• recall everything

  • the interviewer encourages the witness to report all the details of the event, even the details which may seem unimportant
  • memories are interconnected so recollection of seemingly trivial details may then cue a whole lot of other, important memories
• context reinstatement

  • the interviewer encourages the witness to mentally recreate an image of the situation, including details of the environment (e.g. weather, time etc) and their emotions (e.g. what they were feeling)
  • it makes memories accessible through contextual and emotional cues- helps them to retrieve memories
• reverse order

  • the witness is asked to recall the event in a different chronological order e.g. from the end to the beginning
  • it prevents people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual event. also prevents dishonesty- it is harder to produce untruthful account if have to reverse it
• change perspective

  • the witness is asked to mentally recreate the situation from another person‘s point of view
  • disrupts the effect of schemas and expectations on recall. schemas generate expectations of what could have happened and it could be the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened