cognitive interview

• cognitive interview

  method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories.

  • Fisher+ Geiselman recommended techniques to improve EWT in interviews, should be based on psychological insights into how memory works.
• cognitive interview- improvements

  -report everything

  -reinstate the context

  -reverse the order

  -change perspective
• report everything

  witnesses encouraged to include every single detail, even though it may seem irrelevant or witnesses don't feel confident about it- trivial details may be important and may trigger other important memories.
• Reinstate the context

  Witnesses should return to the 'original' crime scene 'in their mind' and imagine the environment and their emotions- related to context dependent forgetting.
• Reverse the order

  Events should be recalled in a different order from the original sequence. This prevents people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than reporting actual events- also prevents dishonesty.
• Change perspective

  Witnesses should recall the incident from other people's perspectives.- This prevents the effect of expectations and also the effect of schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting generate expectations of what would have happened and it's the schema that's recalled rather than what actually happened.
• The enhanced cognitive interview

  Fisher developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction eg: interviewer needs to know when to make eye contact.

  • reduce eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting witnesses to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions.
• Evaluation- support for effectiveness of CI

  Kohnken et al. combined data from 55 comparing CI with the standard police interview.

  • the CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compared with standard interview.
  • shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that's stored in memory but not immediately accessible.
• Counterpoint

  Kohnken also found an increase in the amount of inaccurate information recalled by participants. This was a particular issue in the EWT, which produced more incorrect details that the CI.

  • cognitive interview may sacrifice quality (accuracy) of EWT in favour of quantity.
  • this means that police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from the CIs with caution.
• Some elements may be more useful

  limitation of original CI is that not all it's elements are equally effective or useful.

  Bull+ Milne found that each of the 4 techniques used alone produced more information than the standard police interview. But also found that using a combination of report everything and reinstate context produced better recall.

  • this confirmed police suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others.
  • this casts some doubt on the credibility of the overall CI.
• The CI is more time-consuming

  Limitation= police may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes more time and training.

  Eg- more time needed to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax.

  • CI requires special training+ many forces don't have resources to provide more hours.
  • suggests that the complete CI isn't a realistic method for police.