Eyewitness Testimony - Cognitive Interview

Question 1

Intro

Answer 1

Eyewitness testimony could be improved is police used better techniques when interviewing - based on psychological insights

Question 2

4 main techniques

Answer 2

Report everything - encourage to include every single detail even if seem irrelevant - may trigger other memories
Reinstate the context - witness returns to crime seen ‘in their mind ‘ and imagine enviroment and emotions - relate to context-dependant forgetting
Reverse the order- events recalled in different order - prevents people from reporting expectations and dishonesty
Change perspective - recall event through another perspective - distrusts effect of expectations and schemas

Question 3

Enhanced cognitive interview (ECI)

Answer 3

Additional info added - focus on social dynamics (eye contact to help reduce anxiety)
Ask open ended questions
Get witness to speak slowly
Avoid distractions

Question 4

Standard police interview

Answer 4

Revolves around interviewer- most talking and asking specific questions that require forced choice answers - witness discouraged from adding extra information
Interviewer subconsciously ask leading questions to confirm his/her own beliefs - may contaminate witness memory

Question 5

Ao3 - research into effectiveness of cognitive interview

Answer 5

P - 53 tidies found increase of 34% in amount of correct info generated in ECI compared to standard even tho not real
E - however ma be due to individual elements rather than whole thing - recall across each 4 stages was no different that the whole stages
E - when participants nterviewed using combination of ‘report everything’ and ‘main reinstatement’ , recall was significantly higher than all other components
E - ECI significantly better however not all needed

Question 6

Ao3 - limitation - problems with using the CI in practice

Answer 6

P - there are problems with C in practice
E - police officers suggest it requires more time than is available and feel they’d rather use a standard procedure to just gain info they need. In addition requires special training
E - for this reason ECI has not been widespread

Question 7

Ao3 - limitation - individual differences

Answer 7

P - ECI may not be useful for everyone but rather older witnessed
E - ECI overcomes difficulty of elders forgetting things and procedure makes them go through every detail
Fisher compared young and old adults with ECI and standard interviewing - ECI produced more info but advantage
was grater for older then young participants
E - there full useful for older people but not everyone