Improving EWT

• What is the cognitive interview?

  The cognitive interview is a technique used by the police to help improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. It consists of four main techniques. 
• what is the first technique of the cognitive interview?

  The first is ‘report everything’, which is where the interviewer encourages the witness to report all details about the event, even though these details may seem to be unimportant. 
• what is the second tequnique of the cognitive interview?

  Secondly, the use ‘context reinstatement’, which asks the eyewitness to try and mentally recreate an image of the situation, including details of the environment, such as the weather conditions and the individual’s emotional state including their feelings at the time of the incident. 
• what is the third technique of the cognitive interview?

  The third technique is to ask eyewitness to ‘recall from changed perspective’. This involves trying to mentally recreate the situation from different points of view, e.g. describing what another witness present at the scene would have seen. 
• what is the fourth technique of the cognitive interview?

  Finally, they are asked to ‘recall events in a different order’, so the witness is asked to recall the scene in a different chronological order, e.g. from the end to the beginning.
• what is the enhanced cognitive interview?

  There is also an enhanced version of the cognitive interview which establish key social skills that are needed for the interviewer. For example, they should maintain eye contact but release it when needed, use open-ended questions, as well asking the witness to speak slowly.
• what are the strengths of the cognitive interview?

  In support of the cognitive interview, studies have shown that this technique can increase the accuracy of eyewitness accounts. Kohnken et al. (1999) conducted a meta-analysis of 53 studies and found that the cognitive interview increased accuracy by 34% in comparison to standard interviewing. Therefore, this demonstrates that the cognitive interview is effective in improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
• what are the weaknesses of the cognitive interview?

  Contradictory evidence from kohnken

  some techniques are less effective

  not accessible to everyone
• elaborate on the contradictory information from kohnken as a weakness of the cognitive interview ?

  However, Kohnken et al. also found that there was an increase in accurate information, particularly when using the enhanced cognitive interview. It might be that the cognitive interview produces a greater quantity of information but the quality of that information is compromised. Therefore, this brings into question the effectiveness of the cognitive interview in improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
• elaborate on some techniques being more effective as a weakness of cognitive interview?

  For example, Milne and Bull (2002) (as well as police officers) suggested that the recall using each individual technique is similar but using a combination of report everything and context reinstatement produced the best recall. This reduces the validity of the cognitive interview as a whole as it may that police officers only need to use some of the techniques to improve accuracy and so all 4 techniques are not necessarily needed or as effective.
• elaborate on inaccessibility as a limitation of the cognitive interview?

  Another limitation is that the cognitive interview may only be useful when interviewing those over the age of 8. Geiselman (1999) found that children under the age of six reported things slightly less accurately when they were used the cognitive interview. This could be due to them not understanding the instructions properly. They suggested that cognitive interview was only really effective children over the age of 8. This limits the effectiveness of the cognitive interview as it can only be used with older witnesses.