Improving eyewitness testimoney- Cognitive Interveiw

• Cognitive Interveiw- Fisher and Geiselman(1992)


  method of interveiwing eyewitnesses to help them retrive more acurate memories

  techniques based on evidence-based psychological knowledge of human memory
• Techniques of cognitive interveiw

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


  Witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event, even if it seems irrelevant or the witness doesn't feel confident about it. Details may trigger other important memories
• Reinstate the context

  Witness should return to the original crime scene in their head and imagine the environment. Eg. what the weather was like, what they could see, their emotions- whether they were happy or bored etc. This is related to context- dependent forgetting
• Reverse the order

  Witnesses should recall the event in a different order eg. end to begining or middle to end. This is done to prevent people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than reporting the actual events. Also prevents dishonesty
• Change perspective


  Witnesses hould recall the incident from other people's perspective. Eg. how it could have appeared to other witnesses or the perpetrator. This is done to disrupt the expectations and also the effect of schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting eg going into a shop genertates expectations of what would have happened and its the schema tha is recalled rather than what actually happened.
• Enhanced cognitive interveiw (ECI)

  • Fisher et al (1987)
  • developed additional elements of cognitive interveiw to focus on the social dynamics of the interveiw
  • eg. interveiwer must know when to establish eye contact and when to stop it
  • ECI includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions
• A03- research support for cognitive interveiw

  • eveidence that it works
  • meta-analysis --> combined data from 55 studies comparing CI and ECI with standard police interveiw
  • CI gave 41% increase in accurate info compared to standard interview
  • Only 4/55 in the analysis showed no difference between types of interveiw
  • shows CI is effective
• A03- counter of research support

  • researcher found increase in amount of inaccurate information recalled by p's
  • mostly in ECI
  • CI may sacrifice quality of EWT(eg. accuracy) in favour of amount of details
  • means police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from CI/ECI with caution