AS MEMORY - IMPROVING EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY; THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEW

Question 1

Describe the purpose of the cognitive interview

Answer 1

Put forward by Fischer and Geiselman (1992), the CI is a technique used for police interviews to produce a higher level of accurate information than the standard interview.

Question 2

Describe the 4 components of the CI

Answer 2

1) Report everything; witnesses encouraged to report all details, even if they seem irrelevant at the time as they may become useful later on and may also trigger more useful memories.
2) Reinstate the context; witnesses should revisit the crime scene in their mind and recall things like the weather, surroundings etc (linked to context dependent forgetting and the encoding specificity principle)
3) Reverse the order; witnesses should recall events in a different chronological order (from end to start) to prevent expectations of what should have happened.
4) Change the perspective; witnesses should recall events from the perspective of other ppl involved e.g. the perpetrator, to disrupt schemas and expectations of what should have happened

Question 3

Describe the enhanced CI (not finished)

Answer 3

Fischer et al (1987) came up with some extra parts to the CI to build a more trusting relationship bet interviewer and witness to improve communication bet them. Examples include:

• Interviewer not distracting witness with unnecessary q’s/ interruptions
• Witness controls flow of info
• Asking open ended q’s
• Getting witness to speak slowly
• Remind witness to say “I don’t know” instead of guessing
• Reducing anxiety in witnesses

Question 4

Evaluate the CI

Answer 4

(+) Higher level of accurate information recalled; Könken et al (1999) found that it produced an 88% higher recall of accurate info
(-) Also produces a higher recall of inaccurate information; same meta analysis by Könken et al (1999) found a 63% higher recall of inaccurate information as well
(-) CI is time consuming and also expensive as officers require special training to carry out the CI effectively; uneconomical
(-) Different police forces develop different variations of the CI and so the quality and effectiveness varies by region, and also makes findings more difficult to compare and analyse.