improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony Flashcards
what is the cognitive interview?
Fisher and Geiselman (1992) - argued that EWT could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses. recommended they should be based on psychological insights on how memory works - called it the cognitive interview.
a method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories. it uses four main techniques, all based on evidence-based psychological knowledge of human memory - report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order and change perspective.
who proposed the cognitive interview?
Fisher and Geiselman (1992)
name the four techniques used in the cognitive interview.
- report everything.
- reinstate the context.
- reverse the order.
- change perspective.
describe the stage of the cognitive interview - report everything.
witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event, even though it may seem irrelevant or they don’t feel confident about it.
seemingly trivial details may be important and may trigger other important memories.
describe the stage of the cognitive interview - reinstate the context.
witness should return to the original crime scene in their mind and imagine the environment (e.g. what the weather was like, what they could see) and their emotions (happy or bored).
related to context-dependent forgetting.
describe the stage of the cognitive interview - reverse the order.
events should be recalled in a different order from the original sequence (e.g. final point back to the beginning).
done to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than reporting the actual events. it also prevents dishonesty as it is harder to produce an untruthful account if they have to reverse it.
describe the stage of the cognitive interview - change perspective.
witnesses should recall the incident from other peoples perspectives (e.g. how it would have appeared from other witnesses).
done to disrupt the effect of expectations and the effect of schema on recall. the schema you have for a particular setting generate expectations of what would have happened and it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened.
who proposed the enhanced cognitive interview?
Fisher et al (1987).
describe the enhanced cognitive interview.
Fisher et al (1987) developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the dynamics of the interaction.
for example, the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it.
the enhanced CI also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and ask open ended questions.
discuss research support for the effectiveness of the CI.
one strength of the CI is evidence that it works.
for example, a meta-analysis combined data from 55 studies comparing the CI and ECI with the standard police interview. The CI have an average 41% increase in accurate info compared with the standard interview. Only four 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 but not immediately accessible.
HOWEVER -
the researcher also found an increase in the amount of inaccurate information recalled by ptps. this was a particular issue in the ECI, which produced more inaccurate details than the CI. cognitive interviews may sacrifice quality of EWT in favour of quantity.
this suggests that police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from both CIs and ECIs with caution.
discuss the limitation of CI - some elements may be more useful.
one limitation of the original CI is that not all of its elements are equally effective or useful.
researchers found that each of the four techniques used alone produced more info than the standard police interview. but they also found that 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 police officers suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others. this casts doubt on the credibility of the overall cognitive interview.
discuss the limitation of the CI - time consuming.
another limitation is that police officers may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes more time and training than the standard police interview.
for example, more time is needed to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax. the CI also requires special training and many forces do not have the resources to provide more than a few hours.
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 focus on just a key few elements.
