9. Cognitive interview

• What is the cognitive interview?

  • A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories. It uses four main techniques all based on evidence-based psychological knowledge of human memory
  • Created by Fisher and Geiselman
• Cognitive interview

  1. Report everything - witnesses encouraged to report every detail of the event even if it may seem irrelevant, they may trigger important memories
  2. Reinstate the context - witness should return to the original crime scene 'in their mind' and imagine the environment and their emotions (context-dependent forgetting)
  3. Reverse the order - events should be recalled from end to beginning to prevent dishonesty
  4. Change the perspective - witnesses should recall the incident from other people's perspectives. This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall
• The enhanced cognitive interview

  • Fisher developed additional elements to focus on social dynamics of the interaction eg. the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it
  • Also includes minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions
• Strength - evidence that the CI works

  • A meta analysis by Kohnken et al. combined data from 55 studies comparing the CI with the standard police interviews
  • 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
  • Shows that CI is an effective technique
• Counterpoint - Khonken et al. also found an increase in the amount of inaccurate information recalled by pps

  • This was a particular issue in the ECI which produced more incorrect details than the CI
  • CIs may sacrifice accuracy of EWT in favour of the amount of details given (quantity)
  • This means that police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from CIs/ECIs with caution
• Limitation - police officers may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes more time and training than the standard police interview

  • Time-consuming to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax
  • Also requires special training and many forces do not provide the resources for more than a few hours
  • Suggests that the complete CI as it exists is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it may be better to focus on just a few key elements
• Limitation - the original CI elements are not equally effective or useful

  • Milne and Bull found that each of the four techniques used alone produced more information than the standard police interview
  • They also found that using a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements
  • This confirmed police officers suspicions that some aspects of CI are more useful than others
  • Casts doubt over credibility of overall CI