cognitive interview

• Fisher and Geiselman (1992) argued that eyewitness testimony could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses
• Fisher and Geiselman recommended that such techniques should be based on psychological insights into how memory works, and called these techniques collectively the cognitive interview (CI)
• 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, moreover, they may trigger other important memories.
• Reinstate the context


  The witness should return to the original crime scene 'in their mind' and imagine the environment and their emotions. This is related to context-dependent forgetting.
• Reverse the order


  Events should be recalled in a different order from the original sequence, for example, 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 reporting the actual events. It also prevents dishonesty (it's harder for people to produce an untruthful account if they have to reverse it).
• Change perspective


  Witnesses should recall the incident from other people's perspectives. For example, how it would have appeared to other witnesses or to the perpetrator. This again is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and also the effect of schema on recall.
• Enhanced cognitive interview (ECI)


  Fisher et al. (1987) developed some additional elements of the Cl to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction. For example, the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it. The enhanced Cl also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions
• The schema you have for a particular setting (such as going into a shop) generate expectations of what would have happened and it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened.