Topic 3- collection of cognitive evidence

• Reid- nine steps of interrogation


  1. positive confrontation
  2. theme development
  3. handling denials
  4. overcoming objections
  5. procurement of suspects attention
  6. handling passive moods
  7. present an alternative question
  8. get the suspect to make an oral confession of the crime
  9. convert this to a written confession
• Gudjonsson


  4 factors that increase the likelihood of a false confession

  1. the suspect- false confessions are more likely from very young, old, low IQ and mental health issues
  2. the arrest- when arrested at night, suddenly or violently or interrogated for long periods at night
  3. mental state- false confessions more likely when suspect is stressed, anxious ill or intoxicated
  4. the interrogation- coercive, biased or leading interview tactics can increase chance of false confessions
• PACE act


  • disallows any use of coercion during interviews
  • suspects must always be made aware of their rights- given at the time of their arrest
  • all interviews have to be recorded and passed onto the police, solicitors and a sealed copy must not be tampered with, the copies allow for each interview to be scrutinised to ensure that the have not been too coercive
  • vulnerable suspects can have an adult assigned to them to sit with them during the interview as a source of support
• Mann


  • tested 99 Kent police officers in their ability to distinguish truth from lies in a police interview with a suspect
  • they first completed a questionnaire where they rated their level of experience at interviewing
  • they then saw video clips taken from 14 interviews and were asked to judge if the suspect was telling the truth or lying in each one and how confident they were in their judgement
  • they were also asked to explain what cues they had used to detect the lies
  • the police officers ability to detect lies and the truth were significantly better than chance
• the cognitive interview


  • this interview technique was based on two major psychological principles: context dependent memory and that there is more than one way to retrieve a memory and that if one retrieval cue does not work then there are other cues that might
  • the original cognitive interview has 4 retrieval cues that can be used with witnesses:

  1. report everything
  2. recall in different temporal orders
  3. context reinstatement
  4. recall from different perspectives