improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

• cognitive interview

  a method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories, using 4 main techniques put foward by Fisher and Geiselman(1992) of reporting everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order and change perspective
• cognitive interview - reporting everything

  including every single detail even if it seems irrelevant or they don't feel confident about it, it may trigger other important memories
• cognitive interview - reinstate the context 


  should return to the original crime scene in their mind including the environment and emotions, this is related to context dependent forgetting
• cognitive interview - reverse the order 


  recall in a different order to the original sequence to prevent people reporting their expectations to how the event must have happened and prevents dishonesty
• cognitive interview - change perspective 


  recall the incident from other peoples perspective as this is done to disrupt the effect of expectation and also the effect of schemas
• cognitive interview evaluation strengths

  supporting evidence from meta-analysis by Köhnken et al(1999) the CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compare to a standard interview showing it is an effective technique
• cognitive interview evaluation limitations


  has little practical value due to being too time consuming and requiring specialist skills, Kebbel and Wagstaff argues that only a few hours of training as is possible for many police force, is insufficient to adequately train interviewers, especially for the enhanced social understanding that requires for the enhanced cognitive interview, therefore this lack of time for training may explain why some may be oppressed with CI