12 - Cognitive Interview

Question 1

What was ‘standard interview’ ?

Answer 1

Psychogogisys studied real police interviews and found that questions were brief, direct, fact based and closed. Witnesses were often interrupted and not allowed to expand upon their answer.

Question 2

Describe the four stages of cognitive interview

Answer 2

1. Context reinstatement : eyewitnesses are asked to mentally recreate the context the crime occurred in, both externally and internally. They are asked questions such as ‘ what were you feeling’, ‘what had you just been doing’ , ‘what was the weather like’ etc
2. Report everything : eyewitnesses are asked to report everything they can think of about the event, even if it seems trivial, as it might have a bearing on the crime, or trigger something important. Even if fragmented and doesn’t make sense.
3. Recall from changed perspective : Ew are asked to put themselves in the shoes of someone else at the scene and describe the scene from their point of view. Sometimes birds eye view.
4. Recall in reverse order : ew are asked to report the details of the crime from back to front, or start with a particular aspect of scene and work backwards or forwards from there.

Question 3

What were fishers additional guidelines for the interviews?

Answer 3

Minimise distractions
Actively listen to witness 
Ask open ended questions
Pause after each response
Avoid interruptions 
Adapt language to witness 
Avoid judgemental comments

Question 4

What are the advantages of cognitive interview?

Answer 4

Participants were shown a video of a stimulated crime and tested recall using the cognitive interview, standard interview or hypnosis. The CI lead to the most information being recalled.

Fisher et al trained real police officers in Miami to use the enhanced cognitive interview when interviewing ews. They found that on average there was a 46% increase in the amount of information witnesses gave. 90% of the information that could be verified was accurate.

Fisher et al compared the standard interview to the enhanced CI and found that the ECI led to more facts being recalled.

Question 5

What are they negatives?

Answer 5

Koehnken et al. (1999) found that witnesses recalled more incorrect information when interviewed with the cognitive interview compared to the standard interview technique, perhaps because more detailed recall increases the chance of making a mistake.

It is time consuming to implement and police officers often do not have rhe time and resources to use it.

Reported that police officers believed that Recall From Changed Perspective stage of the cognitive interview misleads witnesses into speculating about the event they witnessed rather than reporting what they actually saw. For this reason the police were reluctant to use it.