Cognitive Psychology: The Cognitive Interview

Question 1

Name the 4 instructions that the eyewitness must follow

Answer 1

> To recreate the context of the original incident

> To report every detail

> To recall the event in different orders

> To change perspectives

Question 2

Name a Study investigating the CI

Answer 2

Geiselman and colleagues

Question 3

What was the procedure?

Answer 3

They showed 89 students violent police training videos. 48 hours later they were individually interviewed by american investigators, detectives etc. The investigators had either been trained in standard police interviewing techniques or in the new Cognitive Interview Schedule.

Question 4

What did they find?

Answer 4

Ignore Confabulated Items, this result is not required

Question 5

What conclusions were drawn from the results?

Answer 5

Students recalled considerably more items in the Cognitive Interview than in the standard interview, although the error rates were very similar.

Question 6

Give a study that supports the use of Cognitive Interview

Answer 6

Bekerian and Dennett (1993)

Question 7

What did they find?

Answer 7

They reviewed 27 studies involving the use of CI (Meta-Analysis) and found that in all cases that the Cognitive Interview Schedule provided more accurate information than other forms of interviewing.

Question 8

Give another study that evaluates the use of CI

Answer 8

Holliday (2003)

Question 9

What was their procedure?

Answer 9

Holliday showed two groups of children, one group aged 4-5, the other ages 9-10, a 5 minute video of a child’s birthday party. The next day all the children were interviewed about what they had seen, using either a standard interview or CI.

Question 10

What did they find?

Answer 10

They found that the use of Cognitive Interview resulted in an increase in accurate recall compared to the standard interview.