Eyewitness testimony: cognitive interview

• Who claimed that EWT could be improved if the police use techniques based on psychological insights into how memory works?

  Fisher and Geiselman (1992)
• what is the cognitive interview

  • based on psychological understanding of memory
  • foundation in cognitive psychology
  • rapport (understanding) is established with interviews using 4 main techniques
• what are the 4 techniques used in a cognitive interview

  1. report everything
  2. reinstate the context
  3. reverse the order
  4. change perspective
• 1. report everything

  • witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of an event, even if it seems irrelevant of the witness is not confident about it
  • seemingly trivial details could be important and may trigger other memories
• 2. reinstate the context

  • the witness returns to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagines the environment and their emotions
  • this is based on the concept of context dependent forgetting - cues from the context may trigger recall
• 3. reverse the order

  • events are recalled in a different order
  • this prevents people asking their descriptions on their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events
  • it also prevents dishonesty (harder to produce an untruthful account if it has to be reversed)
• 4. change perspective

  • witnesses recall the incident from other people’s persepctives
  • this prevents the influence of expectations and schema on recall
  • scheme are packages of information developed through experience. they generate a framework for interpreting incoming information
• who developing the enhanced cognitive interview (ECI)


  Fisher - 1987
• what is the enhanced cognitive interview

  • this includes a focus on the social dynamics of the interaction e.g. knowing when to establish and relinquish eye contact
  • the enhanced cognitive interview also includes ideas such as reducing the eyewitnesses anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open ended questions
• One strength is research support for the effectiveness of the cognitive interview

  A meta analysis by Kohnken (1999) combined data from 55 studies comparing the cognitive interview with the standard police interview. The cognitive interview produced an average of 41% more correct information than the standard interview. Only 4 studies showed no difference. This shows that the cognitive interview is effective in helping witnesses recall information that is available but not accessible
• a strength is research support for the effectiveness of the cognitive interview: counterpoint

  Kohnken also found increases in the amount of inaccurate information, especially in the enhanced cognitive interview (quantity over quality). therefore police officers need to be very careful about how they treat eyewitness evidence from cognitive interviews/enhanced cognitive interviews
• one limitation is that some elements of the cognitive interview are more useful than others

  Milne and Bull (2002) found that each individual technique of the cognitive interview alone produced more information than the standard police interview. but they also found that combining report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any other technique individually or combined. this casts doubt on the credibility of the overall cognitive interview because some techniques are less effective than others.
• another limitation of the cognitive interview is that it is time consuming


  police are reluctant to use the cognitive interview because it takes more time than the standard police interview. the cognitive interview also requires special training but many forces do not have the resources to provide more than a few hours of training (Kebell and Wagstaff 1997). this suggests that the complete cognitive interview is not realistic for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on just a few key elements