Essay
Discuss the use of the cognitive interview as a means of improving the accuracy of memory
A level psychology 16 mark essay full marker on memory
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Discuss the use of the cognitive interview as a means of improving the accuracy of memory.(16 marks).
The cognitive interview (CI) was developed by Geiselman et al in 1984, based on proven
psychological principles concerning effective memory recall. The main influences behind the
development of the CI consisted of the need to improve the effectiveness of police
interviews as well as to apply the results of psychological research to this area, particularly
the work of Elizabeth Loftus. The CI technique is characterised by four distinct components.
The first component is the mental reinstatement of original context. This is where the
interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate both the physical and
psychological environment of the original event. The interviewer may ask the interviewee to
“think back to the day it happened…what had you been doing…what was the weather like…
how did you feel before the event happened…”. This is aimed to make the memories more
accessible due to the environmental and contextual cues of mental reinstatement.
The second component of the cognitive interview is to report everything. The interviewer
encourages the reporting of every single detail – minor or major. None of the details should
be edited and nothing should be left out even if they believe it to be insignificant. This is
because memories are all interconnected with one another so a recollection of something
insignificant could be a cue for many more memories. The interviewer may say: “please do
not leave anything out. I am interested in absolutely everything that you remember…even
partial memories and things you think are unimportant…”.
The third component is to change the order of the event. The interviewer may try
alternative ways through the timeline of the incident, including changing its order. That
rationale behind this is that our recollections are all influenced by schemas (what we would
expect to happen in such an event). Recalling event starting from the end of the event to
the start prevents our pre-existing schema influencing what we recall. Furthermore, it can
be useful to catch those who are being untruthful.
The final component is to change the perspective. The interviewee is asked to recall the
incident from multiple different perspectives by imagining how it would have appeared to
other witnesses present at the time. This is again to disrupt any effects of our schemas.
A strength of the cognitive interview is the research demonstrating the effectiveness of it for
recalling memories. In 1999, Köhnken et al conducted a meta-analysis on 53 studies using
the CI. He found, on average, an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information
generated by the CI compared to the standard interview techniques. However, issues with
this meta-analysis is that most of the studies involved volunteer witnesses tested in a lab
environment. It is also criticised that the effectiveness of the CI may be due to its individual
elements rather than the whole thing. In 2002, Milne and Bull interviewed undergraduate
students and children using just one individual component of the CI and compared the
responses to a control condition (where they were instructed to just try again). Recall across
each of the four individual components was broadly similar and no different from the
control condition. When participants were interviewed using a combination of the ‘report
everything’ and ‘mental reinstatement’ components of the CI, their recall was significantly
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