Improving Accuracy of EWT: The Cognitive Interview

Question 1

What is the cognitive interview (CI)?

Answer 1

• Developed by Geiselman et el, CI is based on proven psychological principles concerning effective memory recall.
• This is a police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime, that encourages them recreate the original context of the crime to increase accessibility of stored info. Our memory is made of a network of associations, so memories are accessed using multiple retrieval strategies

Question 2

What is standard police interview (SPI)?

Answer 2

• Fisher and Geiselman identified errors with the techniques usually used by police in interviews.
• SPI revolves around the interviewer rather than the witness as they do most of the talking, like asking close-ended questions, which discourages extra information from being added. Interviewers may unconsciously ask leading questions to confirm their beliefs about the crime.
• These practices tend to increase inaccurate info collected in the interview, as it encourages withholding info, abbreviated and unsure answers, SPI disrupts the natural process of searching through memory, making memory retrieval inefficient.

Question 3

What are the 4 strategies used in cognitive interviews?

Answer 3

• Mental reinstatement of the original context
• Report everything
• Change the order
• Change the perspective

Question 4

Describe mental reinstatement of original context

Answer 4

• Interviewer encourages interviewee to mentally recreate the physical and psychological environment of the original incident.
• e.g. what was the weather like, how did you feel at the time.
• The aim is to make memories accessible through appropriate contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories.

Question 5

Describe report everything

Answer 5

• Interviewer encourages the reporting of every detail without editing anything out even if it may seem irrelevant.
• e.g. please do not leave anything out. I am interested in absolutely everything that you remember.
• Memories are interconnected so the recollection of one item may cue other memories. In addition, small details may be pieced together from different witnesses to form a clear picture of the event

Question 6

Describe change order

Answer 6

• Interviewer may alternate the timeline of the incident e.g. reversing the order of events.
• The rationale behind this is recollection may be influenced by schemas (general expectations). So recalling the event from end to start may prevent pre-existing schemas from influencing

Question 7

Describe change perspective

Answer 7

• The interviewee is asked to recall the event from multiple perspectives e.g. imagining how it would’ve seemed from another witness. This is suggested by the research done by Anderson and Pichert.
• This is done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall.

Question 8

What is the enhanced cognitive interview?

Answer 8

• Fisher et al developed additions elements of CI which focuses on the social dynamic of the interaction
• e.g. interviewers need to know when the make eye contact and when to stop.
• The ECI also includes ideas like reducing EW anxiety, minimising distractions and asking open-ended questions

Question 9

Give evaluation for the cognitive interview (research support for effectiveness)

Answer 9

• Kohnken et al found a 34% increase in the amount of correct information generated in the CI compared to SPI techniques, showing it can improve the accuracy of EWT.
• However, effectiveness of CI may be due to some individual elements of the cognitive interview. Milne and Bull found when participants were interviewed with a combination of the ‘report everything’ and ‘mental reinstatement’ components of CI, recall was higher than when just using one individual component or the control condition (being told to ‘try again’). This calls into question the effectiveness of reverse order and change perspective as they weren’t as effective.

Question 10

Give evaluation for the cognitive interview (effectives in terms of quantity)

Answer 10

• Its effectiveness has been in terms of quantity of info, not quality.
• The procedure only enhances the quantity of correct recall without compromising the quality of that info. Kohnken et al (1999) found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information when enhanced CI was compared to standard interview.
• This means all info collected from CIs must be treated with caution as it doesn’t guarantee accuracy.

Question 11

Give evaluation for the cognitive interview (problems using the CI in practice)

Answer 11

• Kebbel and Wagstaff report a problem with CI as police officers suggest that CI requires more time than is often available and they prefer to use strategies aimed to limit an EW report to info they feel is necessary.
• Additionally, CI requires training and many forces can’t provide more than a few hours for this
• Means that the use of CI in police interviews hasn’t been widespread