Cognitive Info

• The Cognitive Interview


  •This is a method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories using four techniques that are based on psychological insights.
• The Cognitive Interview


  It differs from a standard interview in a number of ways. For example: a standard interview might just ask the witness to recall the event, but the cognitive interview could ask them to recall the context in which it occurred. This could include environmental details and emotional factors
• 1. Mental Reinstatement of Original Context

  Mentally recreate the physical and psychological environment of the original incident.

  Recall the scene, the weather, what you were thinking and feeling at the time, the preceding events, etc.

  The aim is to make memories accessible. People often cannot access memories that are there. They need appropriate contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories.
• 2. Report Everything


  •The interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything out, even though it may seem irrelevant. Witnesses should not leave anything out even if they believe it to be insignificant or irrelevant.
• 2. Report Everything


  •Memories are interconnected with one another so that recollection of one item may then cue a whole lot of other memories. In addition the recollection of small details may eventually be pieced together from many different witnesses to form a clearer picture of the event.
• 3. Change Order


  •The interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident, for example by reversing the order in which events occurred. The rationale behind this is that our recollections are influenced by schemas.
• 4. Change Perspective


  •The interviewee is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives, for example by imagining how it would have appeared to other witnesses present at the time. This is again done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall.