cognitive interview

• the 4 aspects of cognitive interview are:

  • report everything
  • reinstate the context
  • reverse the order
  • change perspective
• Report everything is when witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of an event, even if it seems irreverent or the witness is not confident about it. Seemingly trivial details could be important and may trigger other memories
• reinstate the context is when the witness returns to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagines the environment lie weather, what they see and their emotions. This based on the concept of context-dependent forgetting. Cues from the context may trigger recall
• reverse the order is when events are recalled in a different order which prevents people basing their descriptions on their experiences of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events. It also prevents dishonesty as it is harder to produce an untruthful account if it has to be reversed
• change perspective is when witnesses recall the incident from other people’s perspectives. This prevents the influence of expectations and schema on recall. Schema are packages of info developed through experience. They generate a framework for interpreting incoming information
• The enhanced cognitive interview was proposed by Fisher et al. and it included a focus on the social dynamics of the interaction like knowing when to establish and relinquish eye contact. The enhanced cognitive interview also includes ideas such as reducing the eyewitness’s anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions
• One strength of the cognitive interview is research support for its effectiveness. A meta-analysis by Kohnken et al. combined data from 55 studies comparing cognitive interview with the standard police interview. The cognitive interview produced an average of 41% more correct info than the standard interview. Only 4 studies showed no difference. This shows that the cognitive interview is effective in helping witnesses recall information that is available but not reliable
• One limitation of cognitive interview is that some of its elements are more useful than others. Milne and Bull found that each individual technique of cognitive alone produced more information than the standard police interview. But they also found that combining report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any other technique individually or combined. This casts doubt on the credibility of the overall cognitive interview because some of the techniques are less effective than others
• One limitation of the cognitive interview is that it is time consuming. Police are reluctant to use the cognitive interview because it takes more time than the standard police interview. The cognitive interview also requires special training but many forces dont have the resources to provide more than a few hours training. This suggests that the complete cognitive interview is not realistic for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on just a few key elements