Cognitive Interview

• Stages of Cognitive Interview:

  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 though it may seem irrelevant or the witness doesn't feel confident about it
  • seemingly trivial details may be important and may trigger other important memories
• Reinstate the Context:

  • witness should return to the original crime scene 'in their mind' + imagine the environment (e.g. what the weather was like, what they could see) + their emotions (e.g. what they were feeling)
  • related to context-dependent forgetting
• Reverse the Order:

  • events should be recalled in different chronological order to original sequence e.g. from the final point back to the beginning or from the middle to the beginning
  • this is done to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events -> also prevents dishonesty (harder for people to produce untruthful account if they have to reverse it)
• Change Perspective:

  • witnesses should recall incident from other peoples perspectives e.g. how it would have appeared to other witnesses or to perpetrator
  • this is done to disrupt the effect of expectations + schema on recall
  • the schema you have for a particular setting (e.g. going into a shop) generate expectations of what would have happened + it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened
• Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI):

  • Fisher et al. developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction e.g. interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact + when to relinquish it
  • ECI also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly + asking open-ended questions