cognitive interviews Flashcards
structure of a cognitive interview:
- introduction
- controlling the interviewer
- open-ended narration
- probing for details
- review important questions
- closing the interview (evaluation))
what is context reinstatement?
where the interviewer tries to mentally recreate the environmental and personal context of the crime of the witness. by asking them about their general activities and feelings on the day of the crime
what is a cognitive interview?
a method of interviewing eyewitnesses and victims about what they remember from a crime scene
why is it important for an interviewer to build a rapport with the interviewee?
to establish a comfortable atmosphere where both parties feel engaged by the content of the discussion
what are the four main featured of a cognitive interview?
- context reinstatement
- report everything
- change the order
- change the perspective
change the perspective (reporting the event from different perspectives)
where witnesses are asked to report the incident differently, describing what they think other witnesses might have seen
changing the order
- recounting the incident in a different narrative order
- gieselman and fisher proposed that due to the recency effect, people tend to recall more recent events more clearly than others
- witnesses should be encouraged to work backwards from the end to the beginning
report everything
- where witnesses are asked to report every detail, even if they think that detail is trivial
- this is because, apparently, unimportant detail might act as a trigger for key information about the event
why is recalling backwards more effectibe than recalling in chronological order?
- when events are recalled in forward order, witnesses reconstruct based on their schemas and this might lead to distortion
- If the order is changed, they are more accurate as they are less likely to use their schemas
