Cognitive interview

• The cognitive interview - Fisher and Geiselman (1992) - improves EWT using psychological insights into memory. There are four main techniques:

  1. Report everything
  2. Reinstate context
  3. Reverse the order
  4. Change perspective

  The cognitive interview can offer 25% or 45% more information.
• The cognitive interview - report everything:

  Every single detail should be included, relevant or irrelevant to the crime.
• The cognitive interview - reinstate context:

  return back to the scene in their mind, or even draw it out. They need to imagine that they are back in the environment. context dependant cues.
• The cognitive interview - reverse the order:

  recall in a different order to the original sequence to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened
• The cognitive interview - change perspective:

  recall from another person’s perspective. this is done to avoid expectations.
• Cognitive interview - the first two components, report everything and reinstate context, are based on the principle that there is a consistency between the actual incident and the recreated situation.
• Cognitive interview - the last two components, reverse the order and change perspective, are based on the assumption that observed information can be retrieved through a number of “routes“, therefore more routes should be tried during questioning.
• Enhanced cognitive interview features:

  • maintain eye contact
  • minimising distractions
  • telling witnesses to speak slowly
  • open ended questions
• cognitive interview AO3. The interview is time-consuming and costs money for both training interviewers and using it. This makes police reluctant to use it, due to lack of resources. They also need special training which can be an issue for various reasons. This makes it unlikely that forces use the ‘correct ‘ version
• cognitive interview AO3. Even if the full cognitive interview isn’t used, it’s okay. Milne and Bulle (2002) found that each technique used singularly produced more information than a standard police interview. This means that the technique can still be used without too much time and resources.
• cognitive interview AO3. individual differences were accounted for. When interviewing older witnesses, the CI is more successful, despite negative stereotypes about their memory. Mello and Fisher compared older and younger adult memory of a filmed crime. The CI produced more info than the standard interview.
• cognitive interview AO3. There are variations of the CI. Each police station has a different version of the CI, adding flexibility. It can adapt to different circumstances. However it is harder to study the effectiveness of CI because it uses different methodology.