the cognitive interview

• fisher and geiselman 1992

  argued that EWT could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses

  They recommend that such techniques should be based on psychological insights into how memory works, and called these techniques collectively the cognitive interview (CI) to indicate its foundation in cognitive psychology
• 4 techniques in the cognitive interview

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

  Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of the event.

  Even if it may seem irrelevant, the details may be important and they may trigger other important memories
• reinstate the context -

  The witness should return the original crime scene ‘in their mind’-

  this means imagining details about the environment, eg, what the weather was like, what they could see and the emotions.

  This is all relevant to context-dependent forgetting.
• reverse the order -

  Events should be recalled in different chronological orders to the original sequence, eg, from the final point back to the beginning

  This is done to prevent dishonesty because it is harder for people to produce an untruthful account if they have to reverse it.
• change perspective - 


  Witnesses should recall the incident from other people’s perspective e.g.

  how it would have appeared to other witnesses or the perpetrator.

  This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall (the schema you have for a particular setting generate expectations of what would have happened which can impact recall).
• the enhanced cognitive interview (ECI)

  Fisher et al (1987) developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the cognitive interview.

  eg, the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it.

  The enhanced cognitive interview also includes ideas such as reducing

  eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to

  speak slowly and asking open-ended questions.