improving accuracy of eyewitness testimony - cognitive interview

Question 1

reinstate context

Answer 1

interviewer encourages interviewee to mentally recreate physical and psychological environment of original incident - aim is to make memories accessible using appropriate contextual and emotional cues

Question 2

report everything

Answer 2

interviewer encourages reporting of every single detail of event without leaving anything out - memories are interconnected so recollection of one item may cue other memories, recollection of small details may be pieced together from different witnesses to form clear picture of event

Question 3

change order

Answer 3

interviewer may try alternative ways through timeline of incident - recollections are influenced by schemas

Question 4

change perspective

Answer 4

interviewee asked to recall incident from multiple perspectives to disrupt effect schemas have on recall

Question 5

evaluation - supporting research

Answer 5

meta analysis of 53 studies - increase of 34% of correct info generated in CI compared to standard interview techniques but most studies involved volunteer witnesses and tested in a lab - doesn’t reflect real world practices.

however effectiveness of CI may be due to individual elements - milne and bull - when PPs were interviewed with combination of report everything and mental reinstatement, recall was significantly higher than when just using one individual component - suggests overall, CI is effective for increasing accessibility of stored info

Question 6

evaluation - quality may suffer

Answer 6

procedure is designed to enhance quantity of correct recall without compromising quality of info - kohnken et al - found 81% increase of correct info but also 61% increase of incorrect info when enhanced CI was compared to standard interview - police need to treat all info collected with caution as it doesn’t guarantee accuracy