Improving The Accuracy Of Eye Witness Testimony (Cognitive Interview) Flashcards
What are the challenges of EWT?
-Encoding.
-Retrieval.
-Interviewer.
What are aspects of encoding challenges?
Setting, distraction, stress.
What are aspects of retrieval challenges?
Schemas, emotional factors.
What are aspects of interviewer challenges?
Question type (e.g. leading questions), body language.
What is the acronym for the instructions of cognitive interviews?
ROPE.
What does the acronym for the instructions of cognitive interviews stand for?
Reinstate (context).
Order (change).
Perspective (change).
Everything (recall).
What is reinstate (context)?
Setting the image, remembering details (e.g. weather, lighting).
What is order (change)?
Reverse order, or start at a specific point (humans don’t store information chronologically).
What is perspective (change)?
Describing the event from the perspective of other people.
What is everything (recall)?
Free recall without interruption.
What was the aim of Geiselmann (1984)?
To compare cognitive interviews with standard interviews.
What was the method of Geiselmann (1984)?
Showed a police training video to 89 students. 48 hours later, they were interviewed individually by detectives.
What were the results of Geiselmann (1984)?
Correct: CI(41.5), SI(29.4).
Incorrect: CI(7.3), SI(6.1).
What was the conclusion of Geiselmann (1984)?
Cognitive interview is a more efficient method for getting accurate information than standard interview.
What are evaluation points for cognitive interviews?
-Produces an increase in inaccurate information (Geilsmann (1989)). The increase in correct information implied that police should continue to use CI. However, the results also suggest that police need to treat all information collected with caution.
-More time consuming than the standard police interview. More time is needed to establish rapport with the witness to allow them to relax. CI also requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a couple of hours.
