Eyewitness testimony: The cognitive interview

• fisher and geiselman claim that EWT can be improved if police use techniques based on psychological insights into how memory works.

  they called it the cognitive interview to indicate its foundation in cognitive psychology.
• rapport (understanding) is established with interviewee.
• what are the four elements of the cognitive interview?

  report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order and change perspective.
• who is associated with developing the cognitive interview originally?

  fisher and geiselman
• report everything

  • witnesses encouraged to include every detail of an event, even if it seems irrelevant or if the witness isn't confident about it
  • seemingly trivial details could be important and may trigger other memories.
• reinstate the context

  • the witness returns to the original crime scene 'in the mind' and imagines the environment (e.g. the weather, what they could see) and their emotions (e.g. what they felt)
  • this is based on the concept of context-dependent forgetting. cues from the context may trigger recall.
• reverse the order

  • events are recalled in a different chronological order (e.g. from the end back to the beginning)
  • this prevents people using their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events
  • it also prevents dishonestly (harder to produce an untruthful account if it has to be reversed)
• change perspective

  • witnesses recall the incident from other people's perspective. how would it have appeared to another witness or to the perpetrator?
  • this prevents the influence of expectations and schema on recall. schema are packages of information developed through experience- they generate a framework for interpreting incoming information
• what are schema?

  packages of information developed through experience. they generate a framework for interpreting incoming information.
• who developed the enhanced cognitive interview?

  fisher et al.
• enhanced cognitive interview

  • fisher et al. developed additional elements of the cognitive interview
  • includes a focus on the social dynamics of the interaction (e.g. knowing when to establish and relinquish eye contact).
  • the enhanced cognitive interview includes ideas such as reducing the eyewitness' anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witnesses to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions.
• limitation of the CI: time consuming

  police are reluctant to use the CI as it takes much more time than the standard police interview. more time is needed to establish rapport with the witness to allow them to relax. kebbell and Wagstaff point out that the CI also requires special training and many forces haven't been able to provide more than a few hours. this means it is unlikely that the 'proper' version of the CI is actually used.
• strength: some elements of full CI are useful

  milne and bull found that each individual element of the CI was equally useful. however, they also found that a combination of 'report everything' and 'context reinstatement' produced better recall than any of the other techniques individually. so at least these two elements should be used to improve police interviewing of eyewitnesses even if the full CI isn't used.
• strength: support for effectiveness of advanced CI

  a meta-analysis by kohnken et al. combined data from 50 studies. the enhanced CI consistently provided more correct information than the standard interview used by police. studies like this indicate that there are real practical benefits to the police of using the enhanced version of the CI.
• limitation: research may be unreliable due to variations of the CI

  studies of the effectiveness of the CI inevitably use slightly different techniques. different researchers may use variations on the CI or enhanced CI, and police forces evolve their own methods. This means it is difficult to draw conclusions about the CI in general