Lecture notes
The cognitive interview
These notes both go into detail and keep the information simple about the cognitive interview. These notes were written in 2022.
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-The Cognitive Interview:-Fisher and Geiselman (1992) argued that eyewitness testimony 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 and called these techniques collectively the Cognitive Interview (CI) to indicate its foundation
in cognitive psychology. There are four main techniques that are used.
1. Report everything- Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of the event, even
though it may seem irrelevant or the witness does not feel confident about it. Seemingly
trivial details may be important and trigger other important memories.
2. Reinstate the context- Witnesses should return to the crime scene ‘in their mind’ and
imagine the environment (what the weather was like, what they could see) and their
emotions. Related to context-dependant forgetting.
3. Reverse the order-Events should be recalled in a different chronological order to the original
sequence i.e., from the final point to the beginning. Prevents people from expressing their
expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events. Also
prevents dishonesty (harder for people to produce an untruthful account if they must
reverse it).
4. Change perspectives- Witnesses should recall the incident from other perspectives e.g., how
it would’ve appeared to either other witnesses or the perpetrator. Disrupts the effect of
expectation and schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting (going into a
shop) generates expectations of what would’ve happened, and it is the schema that is
recalled than what happened.
-Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI)- Fisher et al (1987) developed some additional elements of the
CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction. The interviewer needs to know when to
establish eye contact and when to relinquish it. The enhanced CI also includes ideas such as reducing
eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open
ended questions.
-Evaluation:
The CI is time-consuming- Police may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes much time
than a standard police interview. For example, more time is needed to establish rapport with
witnesses and allow them to relax. The CI also requires special training and many forces
have not been able to provide more than a few hours. Unlikely that the ‘proper’ version of
the CI is used, may explain why police have not been impressed by it.
Some elements may be more valuable than others- Each element was equally valuable. Each
technique used singly produced more information than a standard police interview.
However, Milne and Bull found that using a combination of report everything and context
reinstatement produced better recall than any other condition. Suggests that these two
elements should be used to improve police interviewing of eyewitnesses even if the full CI
isn’t used. Increases the credibility of those who use it.
Supportive research for the effectiveness of the ECI- ECI may offer special benefits, for
example a met-analysis combined data from 50 studies (Köhnken et al-1999). The ECI
constantly provided more correct information than a standard police interview. Indicates
there are real practical benefits to the police using the ECI. Gives police a greater chance of
catching criminals and that is beneficial to society.
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