Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

• What is the Cognitive Interview?

  A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories
• What are the 4 main techniques in the Cognitive Interview?

  1. Reinstate the context
  2. Report everything
  3. Change the perspective
  4. Reverse the order
• Report Everything


  Witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event even if it may seem irrelevant. Trivial details may be important and may trigger other important memories
• Reinstate the context


  The witness should return to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagine the environment (such as what the weather was like and what they could see) and their emotions (whether they were happy or bored)
• Reverse the order


  Events should be recalled in a different order from the original sequence e.g from the end to the beginning or the middle to the beginning. This is done to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event happened rather than reporting the actual events. It also prevents dishonesty (it’s harder for people to produce an untruthful account if they have to reverse it)
• Change the perspective


  Witnesses should recall the incident from other people’s perspectives. For example, how it would have appeared to other witnesses or to the perpetrator. This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and also the effect of schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting (such as going into a shop) generate expectations of what would have happened and it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened
• The enhanced cognitive interview

  • Developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction
  • The interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it
  • The enhanced CI also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions
• AO3:Support for the effectiveness of CI

  • A meta-analysis by a researcher combined data from 55 studies comparing the CI (and the ECI) with the standard police interview
  • The CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compared with the standard interview
  • Only four studies in the analysis showed no difference between the types of interview.
  • This shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory but not immediately accessible
• AO3: Counterpoint to CI

  • Researcher also found an increase in the amount of inaccurate information recalled by participants
  • This was a particular issue in the ECI which produced more incorrect details than the CI
  • Cognitive interviews may sacrifice quality of EWT (accuracy) in favour of quantity (amount of details). This means that police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from CIs/ECIs with caution
• AO3 CI: Some elements may be useful

  • Not all of its elements are equally effective or useful
  • Each of the four techniques used alone produced more information than the standard police interview
  • But they also found that using a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements or combination of them
  • This confirmed police officers’ suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others
  • This casts some doubt on the credibility of the overall CI
• AO3: CI is time consuming

  • Police officers may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes more time and training than the standard police interview
  • More time is needed to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax
  • The CI also requires special training and many forces do not have the resources to provide more than a few hours
  • This suggests that the complete CI is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on just a few key elements
• AO3 CI: Variations of CI

  • Police forces have taken a ‘pick and mix’ approach to the various techniques in the CI
  • This means it is hard to compare the effectiveness of different approaches in research studies
  • This ‘pick and mix’ approach is more flexible
  • It means that individuals can develop their own approach according to what works best for them.