Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: The Cognitive Interview

Question 1

What is a cognitive interview?

Answer 1

A procedure designed for the use in police interviews that involve witnesses

Question 2

What were the two main influences behind the development of the Cognitive Interview?

Answer 2

• The need to improve the effectiveness of police interviewers when questioning
• Apply the results to psychological research to this area

Question 3

Who developed with interviewing technique?

Answer 3

Geiselman et al. (1984)

Question 4

What are the four potential components of the interview?

Answer 4

1. Mental reinstatement of original context
2. Report everything
3. Change order
4. Change perspective

Question 5

What does mental reinstatement of original context encourage?

Answer 5

• encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate both the physical and psychological environment of the original incident

Question 6

What kind of the things might the interviewer ask during mental reinstatement of original context?

Answer 6

• Think about that day
• What has you been doing
• What was the weather like
• try and get a picture of it in your mind

Question 7

What is the aim of the mental reinstatement of original context?

Answer 7

To make memories accessible. People often cannot access memories that are there. They need appropritae contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories

Question 8

What does Report Everything encourage?

Answer 8

The reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything out, even though it may seem irrelevant

Question 9

What kind of things might the interviewer ask when Reporting Everything?

Answer 9

• Please do not leave anything out

- I already know this information

Question 10

What is the aim of report everything?

Answer 10

Memories are interconnected with one anotherso that recollection of one items may then cue more memories

Question 11

What does changing the order involve?

Answer 11

The interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident, for example reversing the order

Question 12

What is the rationale behind reversing the order of events?

Answer 12

Our recollections are influenced by schemas

Question 13

Why might they ask you to recall an event in reverse?

Answer 13

prevents pre existing schemas influcence what you recall

Question 14

What does change perspective involve?

Answer 14

Interviewee may be asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives
For example by imagining how it would have appeared to other witnesses at the present time

Question 15

Why is change perspective effective?

Answer 15

Disrupts the effect that schemas have on recall

Question 16

Research into the effectiveness of the cognitive interview.

Answer 16

A strength:
The amount of supporting research
- Meta-analysis of 53 studies found 34% increase in the amount of correct information
> Although these were mostly volunteer witnesses and tested in labs
- Milne and Bull (2002) participants interviewing using report everything and mental reinstatement components of CI, recall was significantly higher

Question 17

Quality may suffer

Answer 17

A criticism:
Effectiveness has largely been in terms of quanity of information, rather than quality
- The procedure is supposed to enhance the quanity of correct recall without comprimising the quality of that information
- Kohnken et al. (1999)
> 81% increase of correct information
> 61% false positives
This means police may need to treat all information collected from CIs with caution. Doesn’t guarantee accuracy

Question 18

Comparisons are difficult

Answer 18

One problem with evaluating effectiveness of the CI
- When used in the real world is it isn’t just one procedure
> For example, Thames Valley police use a version that does not include the ‘changing perspectives’ component
> Kebbell and Wagstaff 1996
This means that it is hard to estalish the overall effectiveness of the technique when using all components