AO1

• Intro


  The Cognitive interview (CI) was developed by Fischer + Geiselman (1992) as an interview technique used by police to increase the accuracy of recall in EWT and gain an unbiased, detailed account of the crime.
• List the 4 Main Elements:

  1. Context Reinstatement
  2. Report everything
  3. Recall from a changed perspective
  4. Recall in reverse order
• 4 Elements

  CI consists of 4 main elements. Context Reinstatement encourages witnesses to mentally recreate the context of the crime by inducing appropriate contextual + emotional cues. Witnesses may also be asked to Report everything, Recall the event in reverse order, and recall from a changed perspective (e.g. the offender). The aim here is to disrupt schemas that could influence the accuracy of memory retrieval.
• Geiselman et al. (1985) study


  • Investigated the effectiveness of Cognitive Interview (CI) by comparing it to other techniques used in EWT
  • Showed 89 participants videos of violent crimes used to train police
  • 2 days later, an experienced Los Angeles police officer interviewed participants regarding the crimes they had witnessed using 1 of 3 techniques: the CI, a standard police interview, or hypnosis
  • Interviews were filmed and assessed using thematic analysis for correct / incorrect responses
• Gieselman et al. (1985) Findings + Analysis

  
  

  • The CI displayed the most accurate responses, closely followed by hypnosis and then the standard interviews

  
  

  • Similarities in the accuracy of hypnosis and CI are thought to be due to them using both "recall everything" and "context-reinstatement" techniques.
  • It is likely that the Standard interview elicited the least accurate responses because of repeated focus on encouraging a response without the aid of memory retrieval and the lack of open-ended questions which left little room for elaboration.