cognitive interview Flashcards
cognitive interview
Fisher & Geiselman (1992) suggested that police could enhance EWT by employing cognitive interview techniques, based on psychological memory insights, with four main techniques.
what are the 4 stages
1 - report everything
2- reinstate the context
3- reverse the order
4- change the perspective
report everything
- witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of the event,
- even though it may seem irrelevant or the witnesses doesn’t feel confident about it
- seemingly trivial details may be important and they may trigger other important memories
reinstate the context
- witness should return to the original crime scene in their mind and imagine the environment e.g what they could see, what the weather was like etc
reverse the order
- events should be recalled in a. different order from original sequence
- done to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than reporting actual event
- prevents dishonesty = harder for people to lie if they have to reverse it
change the perspective
- witnesses should recall the incident from other peoples perspective
- done to disrupt the effect of expectations and also the effect of schema on recall
- schema you have for a particular setting generates expectations if what would have happened and it the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened
strength
P - One strength of the CI is evidence that supports its effectiveness.
E - A meta analysis by Kohnken et al (1999) combined data from 55 studies comparing the CI (and the ECI) with the standard police interview.
E - The CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compared with the standard interview. Only 4 studies in the analysis showed no difference between the types of interview.
L - This shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory but is not immediately accessible.
limitation
P - A limitation of the original CI is that not all elements are equally effective.
E - Milne & Bull (2002) found that each of the 4 techniques used alone produced more information than the standard police interview. But they also found that using a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements or combination of them.
E - This confirmed police officers’ suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others.
L - This finding casts some doubt of the credibility of the overall CI.
limitation 2
P - Another limitation of the CI is that police officers may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes more time and training than the standard police interview.
E - For example, more time is needed to establish a rapport with a witness and allow them to relax.
E - The CI also requires special training and many forces do not have the resources to provide more than a few hours (Kebbell & Wagstaff 1997).
L - This suggests that the complete CI as it exists is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on just a few key elements.
strength 2
p - Research shows that some techniques of the CI are more effective and useful than others.
E - This is a view shared by many police officers which means forces have taken a ‘pick and mix’ approach to using the CI in practice. This makes it hard to compare the effectiveness of CI in research studies because there is no common standard or CI protocol followed by everyone.
E - On the other hand this ‘pick and mix’ approach makes the CI flexible because it is really a collection of techniques rather than an overall method. This allows forces to evolve their own approaches, keeping what they believe will work in their own circumstances and also permits them to adapt the method to individual cases.
L - Therefore on balance, the variation in the use of the CI is a strength because it can be adapted to different situations. This increases its credibility in the eyes of police officers and witnesses themselves.
