Improving The Accuracy Of Eyewitness Testimony: The Cognitive Interview

Question 1

What is the cognitive interview?

Answer 1

A police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime, which encourages them to recreate the original context of the crime in order to increase the accessibility of stored information.

Question 2

Who developed the cognitive interview?

Answer 2

Geiselman - 1984

Question 3

What was CI based on?

Answer 3

Proven psychological principles concerning effective memory recall

Question 4

What are the components of the CI?

Answer 4

Mental reinstatement of original context
Report everything
Change order
Change perspective

Question 5

What is mental reinstatement of original context?

Answer 5

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

Question 6

What is the aim of mental reinstatement of original context?

Answer 6

To make memories accessible.

People often cannot access memories that are needed. They need appropriate contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories.

Question 7

What might an interviewer say during mental reinstatement of original context?

Answer 7

I would like you to try to think back to the day the event happened. Think about that day…what had you been doing…what was the weather like…try to get a picture in your mind. Think of all the objects that were there…think about the colours. How did you feel at the time?

Question 8

What is report everything?

Answer 8

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

Witnesses should not leave anything out even if they believe it to be insignificant or irrelevant.

Question 9

What might an interviewer say during report everything?

Answer 9

Some people hold back information because they are not quite sure that it is important or you may think that I already know this information. Please do not leave anything out. I am interested in absolutely everything that you remember. Please just tell me it all.

Question 10

Why is report everything important?

Answer 10

Memories are interconnected with one another so that recollection of one item may then cue a whole lot of other memories.

In addition the recollection of small details may eventually be pieced together from many different witnesses to form a clear picture of the event.

Question 11

What is change order?

Answer 11

The interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident, for example by reversing it.
The rationale behind this is that our recollections are influenced by schemas.

Question 12

What’s an example of a schema?

Answer 12

If you think about when you went to a restaurant a few weeks ago your recollection will be influenced by your general expectations (schemas) of what is likely to happen at a restaurant - someone seats you, a waitress takes your order, etc.

Question 13

How does changing the order help?

Answer 13

It prevents your pre-existing schema including what you recall.

Question 14

What might an interviewer say during change order?

Answer 14

I would like to try something which sometimes helps people to remember more. I would like you to tell me what happened backwards. To start, what is the very last thing that you remember happening…what happened before that

Question 15

What is change perspective?

Answer 15

The interviewee is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives, for example by imagining how it would have appeared to other witnesses present at the time.

Question 16

Why is a change in perspective done?

Answer 16

This is to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall.

Question 17

What might an interviewer say during change perspective ?

Answer 17

Try to recall the incident from the perspective of another person involved in the incident. Thinks about where he/she was and isolate everything that you can remember about them, as if they are in a spotlight. Describe what he/she would’ve seen.

Question 18

Who suggested doing a change of perspective?

Answer 18

Anderson and Pichert

Question 19

What are the evaluative points?

Answer 19

Research into the effectiveness of the cognitive interview
Quantity versus quality
Problems with using the CI in practice
Difficulties in establishing effectiveness
Individual differences

Question 20

What is meant by research into the effectiveness of the cognitive interview?

Answer 20

A meta-analysis of 53 studies found, on average, an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the CI compared with standard interviewing techniques (Köhnken, 1999) although most of these studies involved volunteer witnesses (usually college students) tested in a lab (may not reflect real life).

However, the effectiveness of the CI may be due more to some individual elements rather than the whole thing - Milne and Bull (2002).

Question 21

What were the problems with Köhnken’s study?

Answer 21

Most of these studies involved volunteer witnesses - usually college students.
Tested in a lab - may not reflect real life.

Question 22

What was Milne and Bull’s study?

Answer 22

Interviewed undergraduate students and children using just one individual component of the CI, and compared the responses gathered to a control condition (where they were instructed simply to ‘try again’).

Recall across each of the four individual components was broadly similar and no different from that of the control group.

When participants were interviewed using a combination of the ‘report everything’ and ‘mental reinstatement’ components of the CI, their recall was significantly higher than in all other components.

Question 23

What is meant by quantity versus quality?

Answer 23

The procedure is designed to enhance the quantity (amount) of correct recall without compromising the quality (amount of correct recall as a % of total recall) of that information.

However, it may be that effectiveness has largely been in terms of quantity.

Kohnken (1999) found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase in incorrect information (false positives) when the enhanced CI was compared to a standard interview.

This means that police need to treat all information collected from CIs with caution. It does not guarantee accuracy.

Question 24

What is meant by problems with using the CI in practice?

Answer 24

From their interviews with police, Kebbell and Wagstaff report a problem with the CI in practice.

Police officers suggest that this technique requires more time than is often available and that instead they prefer to use deliberate strategies aimed to limit an eyewitness’ report to the minimum amount of information that the officers feel is necessary.

In addition, CI requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours (Kebbell and Wagstaff, 1996).

For these reasons the use of the CI has not been widespread.

Question 25

What is meant by difficulties in establishing effectiveness?

Answer 25

One of the problems with evaluating the effectiveness of the CI when it is used in the real world is that it is not really just one ‘procedure’, but a collection of related techniques.

For example, the Thames valley police use a version that does not include the ‘changing perspectives’ component.

Other police forces that describe themselves as using the CI techniques have tended to use only the ‘reinstate context’ and ‘report everything’ components of the CI (Kebbell Wagstaff, 1996).

Question 26

What is meant by individual differences?

Answer 26

The CI may be particularly useful when interviewing older witnesses.

Negative stereotypes about older adults memory (e.g. that it declines dramatically with ages) can make such witnesses overly cautious about reporting information.

However, the CI, because it stresses the importance of reporting any detail regardless of its perceived insignificance, may overcome such difficulties.

Mello and Fisher (1996) compared older (mean age 72) and younger (mean age 22) adults memory of a filmed stimulated crime using either a CI or a standard police interview (SI).
The CI produced more information than the SI but, significantly, the advantage of the CI over the SI was greater for the older than the young participants.