Cognitive Interviews

• Cognitive Interviews:

  • Used to improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony’s.
  • Fisher and Geiselman argued that EWT could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses.
  • Recommended that such techniques should be based on psychological insights into how memory works. These techniques collectively are the cognitive interviews.
• Report Everything (1):

  • Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of the event even if it’s irrelevant.
  • Some trivial details may be important and trigger other memory’s through cues.
• Reinstate The Context (2):

  • Witnesses should return to the original crime scene.
  • Imagine the enviroment (weather etc), their emotions (happy or sad etc).
  • Related to context - dependent forgetting.
• Reverse The Order (3):

  • Should recall the events in a different order from the original sequence.
  • Prevents witnesses reporting their expectations on how the event must of happened rather than reporting actual events.
  • Prevents dishonesty.
• Change Perspective (4):

  • Should recall the event from other peoples perspectives.
  • Disrupts expectations and the effect of schemas on recall.
  • Schema you have on particular settings generate expectations.
• Enhanced Cognitive Interviews (ECI):

  • Fisher developed some additional elements of cognitive interviews to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction.
  • E.g the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it.
  • ECI includes ideas such as reducing eyewitnesses anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions.
• Evaluation:

  Support that it works

  • Meta-analysis by Gunter Kohnken.
  • CI gave an average 41% increase of accurate information compared to standard interviews.
  • Shows its effective for memory’s not accessible.
  • However, he found the ECI produced more incorrect details than the CI, shows police officers should treat EW evidence from CI/ECI with caution.
• Evaluation:

  • Not all elements of CI are effective and useful
  • Milne and Bull found that using a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than all of them used together.
• Evaluation:

  • CI is time consuming.
  • It requires special training and can take more than a few hours to do.
  • Not realistic for police officers to use on a day to day basis.