Improving The Accuracy Of Eyewitness Testimony: Cognitive Interview Flashcards
What is cognitive interview?
A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories use for techniques. Report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order, change perspective
Explain the cognitive interview?
1.Report everything include every single part of detail, even if they don’t feel confident about it as it might trigger other important memories.
2.reinstate the context return to the original crime scene in their mind and imagine environment and their emotions. This is related to constant context dependent forgetting.
3. reverse the order recorded a different order from original sequence this is done to prevent people reporting the expectations also prevents dishonesty.
4. change perspective record incident from other people’s perspective and what would’ve appeared to other witnesses.
Explain the enhanced cognitive interview?
Fisher developed some additional elements of CI to focus on social dynamics of interaction. The interview needs to know when to establish eye contact and went to relinquish it. This may reduce eyewitness anxiety.
Evaluate one strength of cognitive interview?
It works for example meta analysis combined from 55 studies comparing the CI with police interview gave an average of 41% increase in accurate information compared to the standard interview. This shows that CI is an an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory
Evaluate one limitation of cognitive interview?
Police officers may be reluctant as it takes more time and training in the standard police interview as it takes to witness longer to relax and also requires more training as many forces to have the resources to provide more than few hours. This suggests that complete CI is not realistic method for police officers to use.
