The cognitive interview was designed by Fisher and Geiselman in 1992. It was designed on the basis that EWT could be improved if police used better techniques
The cognitive interview has 4 main techniques (COPE):
reinstate the Context
change the Order
change the Perspective
report Everything
Reinstate the Context:
The witness should return to the original crime scene in their mind and imagine the environment and their emotions. This is related to context dependent forgetting
Change the Order:
Events should be recalled in a different chronological order e.g backwards. This prevents expectations of how the event should have happened or dishonesty
Change the Perspective:
Witnesses should recall the incident from other people’s perspectives e.g another witness. This is done to prevent expectations and schema
Report Everything:
Include every single detail of the event
the cognitive interview is very time consuming. Police may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes much more time than the standard police interview
the cognitive interview also requires special training but many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours
Kohnken conducted a meta analysis from 53 studies and found the cognitive interview provided more correct information than the standard police interview
Milne and Bull (2002) found each technique used individually produced more information than the standard police interview. They found that using a combination of report everything and context reinstatement produced better recall