Cognitive interviews Flashcards
What is a Cognitive interview
- A technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime
- Which encourages them to recreate the original context
- In order to increase the accessibility of stored information
Why are Cognitive interviews important?
*it improves the effectiveness of questioning witnesses in police interviews
Who were the two people that argued that eyewitness testimonies could be better (3)
- FIsher and Geiselman (1992)
- Laid the foundations for the CI
*Reviewed memory literature- people remember things better if they are provided with retrieval cues
What are the 4 stages of cognitive interview
- Report everything
- Reinstatement of context
- Change/reverse order
- Change perspective
Name and explain The first 2 stages of the cognitive interview
1.Report everything- Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of the event
2.Reinstatement of context- The witnesses should return to the original crime scene in their minds and imagine the environment and their emotions.
Name and explain the last two stages of the cognitive interview
3.Change/reverse order- Events recalled should be reversed or be recalled in a different chronological order to the original sequence.
* It also prevents dishonesty
4. Change perspective- Witnesses should recall the incident from other people’s perspectives. For example how it would have appeared to other witnesses or to the perpetrator.
* This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall
What is the enhanced cognitive effect (ECI) (3)
- Fisher et al (1987) developed some additional elements of the CI.
*For example, the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it. - The enhanced CI also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety minimising distractions getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open ended questions
Strength for the use of Cognitive interviews
Comparing the memory of old and young people
*Mello and Fisher (1996)
* When CI and normal interview techniques were tested on both older adults (72 Years) and younger adults (22) memory,
* CI was better for both but were more significantly an advantage for the elderly
What is a weakness of The CI (cognitive interview)? (4)
Time
- Police may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes much more time than the standard police interview.
- For example, more time is needed to establish rapport with the witness and allow them to relax.
- The CI also requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours
- This means it is unlikely that the proper version of the CI is actually used, which may explain why the police have not been that impressed by it
Wright and Holliday (2007) (3)
Strength of CI (Age)
- Investigated how age affects recall
- The older the participant (75-95) the less complete and less accurate the recall
- However when they used the cognitive interview technique, the older participants recalled significantly greater detail without giving any false information
CI creates an increase in inaccruatue information
K et al weakness
- The techniques of the CI aim to increase the amount of correct information remembered
- But the recall of incorrect information may also be increased
- Kohnken et al (1999) found a 61% increase of incorrect information (false positives) when the ECI was compared to a standard interview
- This being said they also found an 81% increase in correct information.
