improving the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Question 1

what is the cognitive interview

Answer 1

a police technique for interviewing witnesses to crime which uses a range of recall techniques encouraging them to recreate the original context of the crime in order to increase accessibility of stored info

Question 2

why is a range of recall techniques used in the cognitive interview and not just one

Answer 2

our memory is made up of a network of associations rather than discrete events

Question 3

list the different recall techniques of the cognitive interview

Answer 3

1) mental reinstatement of context
2) report everything
3) change order
4) change perspective

Question 4

outline mental reinstatement of context

Answer 4

witness encouraged to mentally recreate both the physical and psycholgocial environment of the original incident
aims to make memories accessible by increasing contextual and emotional cues

Question 5

outline the report everything technique

Answer 5

encouraged to report every detail of the event without editing anything even if it seems irrelevant
memories are interconnected with one another so that recollection of one item may create a cue for other memories

Question 6

outline the change order technique

Answer 6

the interviewer may try alternative ways of explaining the timeline of events such as reversing the way the events occurred
this prevents the pre-existing schema influencing what you recall

Question 7

outline the change perspective technique

Answer 7

asked to recall an event from multiple perspectives such as imagining how it would have appeared for the victim
this is done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall

Question 8

evaluate the cognitive interview

Answer 8

1) supporting research - a meta-analysis of 53 studies found 34% in the amount of correct info generated using the CI compared to standard techniques, further research found that using several recall techniques should be higher real than just using one individual complement
2) challenging research- comparisons are difficult, CI us not one procedure but a collection of multiple related techniques, eg Thames valley does not use the changing perspective technique and other forces tended to use only reinstatement of context and report everything, hard to establish overall effectiveness when using all comments
3) issue and debate- ethical issues pps who witnessed a crime should be protected from harm during interview, along PPS to recall a traumatic event may cause undue psychological harm
4) research methods - studies investigating tend to be lab-based using volunteer witnesses decreasing generalizability and ecological validity
5) practical application - accounts for individual differences, CI is more effective at interviewing older individuals as avoids negative stereotypes that older individuals have declining memory by stressing the importance of recalling everything