Eye witness testimony: Cognitive interview

Question 1

What is a cognitive interview?

Answer 1

• A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories.

Question 2

What are the 4 main techniques in a CI?

Answer 2

1. Recall everything.
2. Context reinstatement.
3. Change the order.
4. Change the perspective.

Question 3

1. Report everything

Answer 3

• Witnesses encouraged to include every single detail of the event, even though it may seem irrelevant.
• Trivial details may trigger other important memories.

Question 4

2. Context reinstatement

Answer 4

• Witnesses return to the original crime scene in their mind + imagine the environment.
• Related to context dependent forgetting.

Question 5

3. Change the order

Answer 5

• Recall events in different chronological order to the original sequence.
• Prevents people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events.

Question 6

4. Change the perspective

Answer 6

• Recall event from other people’s perspective.
• Disrupts the effect of expectations and schema on recall.

Question 7

The enhanced cognitive interview

Answer 7

Fisher
- Developed more elements to the CI to focus on the social dynamics of interaction.
e.g. the researcher needs to know when to establish eye contact etc.
- Enhanced CI includes ideas of reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open ended questions.

Question 8

Research: CI effectiveness (Geiselman)= Aim + Method

Answer 8

Aim: Investigate the effectiveness of the CI.

Method:
- Ppts viewed film of violent crime.
- After 48 hours, were interviewed by a policeman using either: CI, Standard Interview, or hypnosis.
- The no. of facts accurately recalled, and no. of errors made were recorded.

Question 9

Research: CI effectiveness (Geiselman)= Results + Conclusion

Answer 9

Results:
- The avg. no. of correctly recalled facts for the CI was 41.2, for hypnosis it was 38.0 + for SI it was 29.4.
- No significant no. of errors in each condition.

Conclusion:
- The CI leads to better memory of events, with witnesses able to recall more relevant info compared with a traditional SI.