Improving EWT (The Cognitive Interview) Flashcards
what is a cognitive interview?
a police interviewing technique that encourages the witness to recreate the original context in order to increase the accessibility of stored information
what did Fisher (1989) study?
trained a group of detectives in america to use the cognitive interview technique
they used genuine witnesses to crimes
they gained 47% more information when using this technique
what are the 4 stages of a cognitive interview?
- report everything
- reinstatement of context
- change order
- change perspective
what did Wright and Holliday (2007) study?
how age affects recall - the older the participant (75-95 years of age), the less accurate the recall
however when they used the cognitive interview technique, the older participants recalled significantly greater detail without giving any false information
what did Geiselman et al (1985) study?
showed 89 students police videos of violent crimes
48 hours later they were interviewed by detectives
either the cognitive interview or plain interviewing was used, and those using the CI techniques showed better recall
what did Kohnken et al (1999) study?
meta analysis of 53 studies, found an average a 34% increase in the amount of correct information gained by using the CI technique
BUT most of the sample were university students
what did Milne and Bull (2002) study?
found that when they use a combination of ‘report everything’ and ‘mental reinstatement’, participants recall was significantly higher
BUT it was a lab experiment so artificial
what did Mello and Fisher (1996) study?
when CI techniques were tested on both older adults and (72 years) and younger adults (22 years) memory, CI was better for both
but this was more significantly an advantage when interviewing the elderly
what are limitations of the cognitive interview?
different police forces use different aspects so it’s hard to evaluate its effectiveness fully
takes more time than is usually available
demands are placed on the interviewer to ‘probe’ effectively
the quantity and quality of CI training is an issue
what are strengths of the cognitive interview?
although CI produces ‘false positives’, there is an increase in the amount of correct information recalled compared to a standard interview
valuable in reducing miscarriages of justice in countries where these are likely to occur
what does recall in reverse order mean?
rather than reporting everything in a linear fashion, witnesses are instructed to recall from the end and work backwards
what does context reinstatement mean?
witnesses should be instructed to mentally recreate their physiological, cognitive and emotional states that existed at the time of the original event
this is because memory retrieval is most efficient when the context of the original event is recreated at the time of recall
what does report everything mean?
Witnesses often withhold information because they do not know what is relevant for a police investigation.
To minimize witnesses’ withholding information, interviewers should instruct them to report everything they think about, whether it is trivial, out of chronological order.
what does recall in a changes perspective mean?
The technique ‘change perspective’ involves the witness reporting the incident from somebody else’s viewpoint which aims to trigger more memories of the incident from the witness and give a more complete explanation of what happened to the interviewer.