improving the accuracy of eye witness testimony: cognitive interview Flashcards
who came up with the cognitive interview and why did they do this?
Ronald Fisher and Edward Geiselman (1992). They argued that the eyewitness testimony could be improved if police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses. the techniques should be based on psychological insights into how memory works.
What are the 4 main techniques used in a cognitive interview
- Report everything- witnesses should be encouraged to include every single detail of the event, even if it seems irrelevant. As trivial details may be important and could trigger other important memories.
- Reinstate the context - witness should return to original crime scene in their mind. imagine the environment and their emotions. This is related to context-dependant forgetting.
- reverse the order- different from original sequence e.g final point to beginning or middle to beginning. prevents people from reporting their expectations and how the event must have happened rather than reporting the actual events. also prevents dishonesty.
- Change perspective- witnesses should recall the incident from other’s perspectives. to disrupt the effect of expectations and also the effect of schema on recall. the schema you have for a particular setting generates expectations of what would have happened and it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened.
what is the enhanced cognitive interview (ECI) and who came up with it?
Fisher et al. (1987)
focussed on the social dynamics of the interaction. E.G when the interviewer needs to develop eye contact and when to relinquish it. Also includes ideas such as reducing eye witness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting witnesses to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions.
Explain a strength for the cognitive interview- the effectiveness of the CI
there’s evidence that it works. E.G, a meta analysis by Günter Köhnken et al. (1999) combined data from 55 studies comparing CI (and ECI) with the standard police interview.
The CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compared with the standard interview. Only 4 studies in the analysis showed no difference between the types of interview.
This shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory (available) but not immediately accessible.
Explain a counterpoint for support for the effectiveness of the CI
Köhnken et al. also found an increase in the amount of inaccurate info recalled by participants. This was a particular issue in the ECI, which produced more inaccurate details than the CI. cognitive interviews may sacrifice quality of EWT (i.e accuracy) in favour of quantity (amount of detail).
This means that police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from the CI’s/ECI’s with caution.
suggest a limitation of CI- some elements may be more useful.
not all of its elements are equally effective or useful.
Rebecca Milne and Ray Bull (2002) found that each of the 4 techniques used alone produced more information than using a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements or combination of them. this confirmed the police officers suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others.
This casts some doubt on the credibility of the overall cognitive interview.
Explain the limitation that the CI is time consuming
police officers may be reluctant to use the CI bc it takes more time and training than the standard police interview.
E.G more time is needed to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax.
The CU also requires special training and many forces do not have the resources to provide more than a few hours (Kennelly and Wagstaff 1997).
This suggests that the complete CI as it exists is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it might be better to just focus on a few elements
