Improving EWT: Cognitive Interview

• Improving accuracy of EWT: Cognitive Interview by Fisher + Geiselman in the 1980's -

  1. Reporting Everything
  2. Recall from a changed perspective
  3. Context Reinstatement
  4. Changing the order of events
• Report Everything: interviewer encourages the witness to report all details even those that seem unimportant. Memories are typically interconnected so recollection of one may lead to recall of other memories which may impact the investigation.
• Recall from a changed perspective: aim to mentally recreated the situation from different points of view e.g. what another witness may have seen. This is done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall or to avoid personal expectations of being in a certain situation e.g. not doing enough to help.
• Context Reinstatement: Trying to mentally recreate the situation including details of the environment e.g. weather conditions, the witnesses emotional state, what they were doing at the time of the incident. As if returning to the crime scene 'in their mind'. This makes memories accessible & provides emotional & contextual cues which should reduce effect of retrieval failure.
• Changing the order of events: The witness is asked to describe the event in a different chronological order e.g. end to beginning. This is as our recollections are biased by schemas so recalling in a different order prevents pre-existing schema's to impact memory.
• The Enhanced Cognitive Interview -

  • encourage the witness to relax & speak slowly
  • offer comments to help clarify witness statements
  • adapt questions to suit the understanding of individual witnesses.
• AO3 -

  • Leads to more accurate recall than a standard police interview. RS Geiselmen (1985) pps watched a film of a violent crime & after 48hrs they were interviewed via standard & CI found that the CI ed to better recall & pps remembered more relevant details.
  • Open-ended questions allow more detail, not restrictive, reduces effect of leading questions.
  • More time-consuming, requires more training & doesn't have significant improvement, more expensive for the economy.
• AO3 -

  • Individual differences between officers, large variations.
  • Some elements are more useful than others for example, research has shown using a combination of 'report everything' & 'context reinstatement' produced better recall than any conditions individually.
• reinstating the context – interviewee mentally reinstates the environmental and personal context of the incident, e.g. sights, sounds, weather etc; (based on the principle of retrieval failure/cue dependent forgetting that cues may trigger recall)
• report everything – interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event, even though it may seem irrelevant; (such detail may trigger other memories).
• changing order – interviewer tries alternative ways through the timeline of the incident; (reduces possibility that recall may be influenced by schema/expectations)
• changing perspective – interviewee recalls from different perspectives, e.g. how it would have appeared to other witnesses; (reduces influence of schema)
• features of enhanced cognitive interview to facilitate recall

  • focus on social interaction
  • reducing anxiety/distractions
  • slow speech
  • use of open-ended question
• AO3 -

  • use of evidence to support/challenge the effectiveness of cognitive interview (CI), e.g. Kohnken et al (1999)
  • although CI leads to more correct information, incorrect information also increases (although some studies, e.g. Geiselman dispute this)
  • some elements of CI may be more successful than others – Milne and Bull (2002)
  • the success of CI may be related to the age of witness
  • CI requires training and investment so it may not always be available because of limited resources