Cognitive Interview

Question 1

Reasons why specific techniques are important:

Answer 1

Loftus and Palmer (1974) - ‘smashed into’ rather than ‘contacted’ within question, after watching video of multiple car accident, increased the speed estimates from 31.8mph to 40.8mph.

Eyewitness memories are fragile and can be distorted surprisingly easily after event.

• 1 week later participants were asked if they had seen any broken glass. 32% of ‘smashed into’ group reported that there had been even though there had not.
• Distortion of memory – hypothesised to be due to the precise schema activated by the particular verb.

Question 2

The existence of both false and original memories

Answer 2

Tversky and Tuchin (1989): both original and misinformation coexist as when STOP changed for YIELD in questioning, and then on slide when re-presented, accepted as correct whereas novel sign is not.

Question 3

2 cognitive principles

Answer 3

Gieselman (1985): cognitive psychological principles of 1.) encoding specificity and 2.) possibility of several routes to an encoded event, accessible via different cues therefore came up with the 4 principles of CI.

Question 4

Effectiveness of CI

Answer 4

Gieselman & Fischer (1986) found evidence of improvement from all the 4 techniques however others have contradicted these findings.

Milne (1997) did a review of the CI and found full CI procedure and contextual reinstatement improved recall, but no difference in the other cognitive conditions.

Memon et al (1997) suggested that more inaccurate information is also given by the witness, as the effect of a social desirability bias. The witness alters their story to make it more acceptable in the eyes of the interviewer.

Would it be more efficient to use contextual reinstatement along with rapport building, as the CI takes a long time to conduct.

Question 5

What are the 4 principles

Answer 5

Contextual Reinstatement
Recall everything
Recall from a variety of perspectives
Retrieval attempts starting from different points

Question 6

Contextual Reinstatement

Answer 6

Mentally reconstruct the physical (external) and personal (internal) contexts which existed at the time of the crime. This is based on the encoding specificity principle (Tulving & Thomson, 1973); a cue will be effective in retrieving information in memory to the extent that it was specifically encoded with the to-be-remembered information.
Smith (1988): Especially useful if a lot of time has passed between the event and attempted recall.

Godden & Baddeley (1975): context dependent recall.

Teasdale and Russell (1983): mood dependency

Question 7

Recall everything

Answer 7

Facilitates additional information as no screening out of even information which is thought to be irrelevant (Fischer and Geiselman, 1992). recalling partial details may lead to subsequent recall of additional relevant information

Question 8

Recall from a variety of perspectives

Answer 8

Aim is to use multiple pathways to retrieval and to increase the amount of detail elicited.

Anderson & Pitchert (1978)

However there are concerns that it could lead to fabricated information; the witness has created a narrative, possible reconstructions (Bartlett, 1932).

Milne (1997): it does not increase inaccurate but NOR amount of accurate information.

Question 9

Retrieval attempts from different starting points

Answer 9

Geiselman and Callot (1990) found that it was more effective to recall in forward order once followed by reverse order than to make two attempts to recall from the beginning.

So far there is no evidence that this technique yields any more information than a second retrieval attempt when used in a cognitive interview (Memon,et al 1997) although Milne (1997) has found the instruction to be of some benefit when applied with specific prompts.