Cognitive Interview

• Describe cognitive interview (1)

  • reinstating the context - interviewee mentally reinstates the environmental and personal context of the incident, eg sights, sounds, weather etc; (based on the principle of retrieval failure/cue-dependent forgetting that cues may trigger recall)
  • report everything - interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event, even though it may seem irrelevant; (such detail may trigger other memories)
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• Describe cognitive interview (2)

  • changing order - interviewer tries alternative ways through the timeline of the incident; (reduces possibility that recall may be influenced by schema/expectations)
  • changing perspective - interviewee recalls from different perspectives, eg how it would have appeared to other witnesses; (reduces influence of schema)
  • features of enhanced cognitive interview to facilitate recall - focus on social interaction, reducing anxiety/distractions, slow speech, use of open-ended questions
• Cognitive interview

  • Reinstate context
  • Report everything
  • Changing order/ reverse order
  • changing perspectives
• features of cognitive interview

  features of enhanced cognitive interview to facilitate recall

  • focus on social interaction
  • reducing anxiety/distractions
  • slow speech
  • use of open-ended questions