Improving Accuracy Of EWT: Cognitive Interview Flashcards
Who argued that EWT could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses
Fisher and Geiselman
Fisher and Geiselman recommended that such techniques should be based on
Psychological insights into how memory works and called it cognitive interview to indicate its foundation in cognitive psychology
What is the cognitive interview?
A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories using four main techniques all based on well-established psychological knowledge of human memory: 1- report everything 2- reinstate the context 3- reverse the order 4- change perspective
At the beginning of the interview, the interviewer aims to establish ‘rapport’ with the interviewee, so
The interviewee feels the interviewer is not against them, but will try to understand their feelings
What is involved in report everything?
- first element of CI is ‘report everything’ where witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event, even thought it may seem irrelevant or the witness doesn’t feel confident about it
- seemingly trivial details may be important, and moreover, they may trigger further memories
What is involved in context reinstatement?
- second element of CI is ‘context reinstatement’ where the witnesses should return to the original crime scene in their mind and imagine the environment
- e.g. what the weather was like, what they could see
- and their emotions e.g. how they felt
- based upon context-dependent forgetting
= provides cue for memory recall of the event
What is involved in change the order?
- third element of CI is ‘reverse the order’ where events should be recalled in a different order to chronological order e.g. from final point back to the beginning or from the middle to the beginning
- this is done to prevent people using their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events
- it also prevents dishonesty as it’s harder for people to produce an untruthful account if they have to reverse it
What is involved in change perspective?
- fourth element of cognitive interview is ‘change perspective’ where witnesses should recall the information from the perspective of other individuals who were at the scene
- e.g. how it would have appeared to witnesses at different angles, or to the perpetrator
- this is also done to prevent the influence of expectations and schema on recall
What is enhanced cognitive interview?
- Fisher et al developed some additional elements to the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction
- e.g. knowing when to establish and when to relinquish eye contact
- the enhanced CI also includes ideas such as reducing the eyewitnesses’ anxiety, minimising distractions and asking open-ended questions
What are the evaluation points for use of CI?
❌ time-consuming process
❌ some elements may be more valuable than others (Milne and Bull)
✅ considerable support for enhanced CI effectiveness (Köhnken et al)
❌ increase in inaccurate information (Köhnken et al)
❌general issue= may be unreliable because variations of CI are used
Explain how one limitation of the CI is that it is time-consuming to conduct
- police forces are reluctant to utilise the method simply due to the fact it takes more time to conduct compared to the standard police interview
- for example, more time is needed to establish rapport with the witnesses to allow them to relax
- the CI also requires specialist training and still, many forces have not been able to provide adequate training
- this is a limitation for CI due to its lack of real-world application despite the method being successful and useful in theory, it isn’t being implemented in real-life eye-witness interviews
Explain how a limitation of CI is that some elements may be more valuable than others
- Milne and Bull found that using a combination of ‘report everything’ and ‘context reinstatement’ produced more detailed recall than any of the other conditions individually (which produced similar results to standard police interviews)
- this suggests that even if the whole process of CI is too time-consuming for police forces to utilise, they should at least consider incorporating ‘report everything’ and ‘context reinstatement’ in interviewing eyewitnesses
Explain how a strength of cognitive interview is that there is considerable support for enhanced CI effectiveness (Köhnken et al)
- for example, a meta-analysis by Köhnken et al combined data from 50 studies
- enhanced CI consistently provided more correct information than the standard interview by police
- this is a clear strength because studies such as this, indicate that there are real, practical, benefits to police forces adopting the use of the enhanced version of CI
Explain how a limitation of CI is an increase in inaccurate information
- the techniques of CI aim to increase the quantity of correct information recalled but the recall of incorrect information may also be increased
- Köhnken et al also found along with a significant increase of correct information, a clear increase of incorrect information (false positives) when enhanced CI was used compared to a standard interview
- this presents a significant challenge for CI as even though correct recall is increasing, so is incorrect recall, leading police forces to become even more sceptical about the use and if method is adopted, the results suggest that police need to treat all information collected with caution
Explain how CI may be unreliable because variations are used
- studies into effectiveness of CI inevitably use slightly different techniques
- different researchers may use variations on the CI or enhanced CI
- meaning it is difficult to draw conclusions about CI in general
