Cognitive interview

• what is the CI

  a method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories
• 1. Report Everything


  • the interviewer encourages the witness to report all details about the event
  • even though these details may seem to be unimportant.
• 2. Context reinstatement

  • asks the eyewitness to try and mentally recreate an image of the situation
  • including details of the environment, such as the weather conditions
  • the individual’s emotional state including their feelings at the time of the incident.
• 4. Recall from different perspective

  • involves trying to mentally recreate the situation from different points of view
  • e.g. describing what another witness present at the scene would have seen.
• 3. recall event in a different order

  • witness is asked to recall the scene in a different chronological order, e.g. from the end to the beginning.
• what is the enhanced cognitive interview


  • Fisher developed on the original CI.
  • establishes key social skills that are needed for the interviewer.
  • For example, they should maintain eye contact but release it when needed
  • use open-ended questions
  • asking the witness to speak slowly.
• the CI is time consuming


  • police may be reluctant to use CI as it takes much more time than the standards police interview.
  • the CI also requires specialist training so the police are unlikely to use the proper CI.
  • limits use even if its effective
• some of the techniques may be more effective than others

  
  

  • Milne and Bull suggested that the recall using each individual technique is similar
  • but using a combination of report everything and context reinstatement produced the best recall.
  • This reduces the validity of the cognitive interview
  • police officers only need to use some of the techniques to improve accuracy and so all 4 techniques are not necessarily needed or as effective.
• research support for the ECI

  • Kohnken et al did a meta-analysis
  • found that the cognitive interview increased accuracy by 34% in comparison to standard interviewing.
  • the cognitive interview is effective in improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

  
  

  • However, Kohnken et al. also found that there was an increase inaccurate information
  • cognitive interview produces a greater quantity of information but the quality of that information is compromised.
  • question the effectiveness of the cognitive interview