M9. IAEWT: Cognitive Interviews

Question 1

Cognitive Interview

Answer 1

• method of interview; thought to be effective in increasing accurate recall rates
• 4 stages: Report Everything, Reinstate Context, Change Perspective, Reverse Order

Question 2

Report Everything

Answer 2

• significant and insignificant
• insignificant events may act as ‘cues’ for triggering significant event recall

Question 3

Reinstate Context

Answer 3

• recall weather, location, mood of day
• prevents context-dependant forgetting; reminds EW of external cues at time

Question 4

Change Perspective

Answer 4

• recalling events from victim or persecutor
• avoids P’s account being affected by schemas or pre-conceptions of how crime occurred

Question 5

Reverse Order

Answer 5

• reduces EW ability to lie (simply difficult)
• reduces impact of schemas on perception of events

Question 6

ENHANCED Cognitive Interview

Answer 6

• Fisher et al. (1987)
• focuses on social dynamics of interaction between EW and interviewer
• e.g. knowing when to make eye contact, and when to diminish it (increases calmness of EW) and increases rapport with EW (increasing likelihood that they will be truthful about sensitive/personal topics)

Question 7

+ Eval: Entire CI doesn’t have to be used

Answer 7

• Milne and Bull (2002)
• Context Reinstatement and Report Everything produced greatest recall of accuracy that any other combination of steps
• easy to implement, as even a police force that doesn’t have time to train everyone in CI, could teach them CR and RE to be able to increase EWT accuracy immediately

Question 8

• Eval: CI too time consuming and requires specialist skills

Answer 8

• Kebbel and Wagstaff
• argued that the few hours of training that police forces would undergo, wasn’t sufficient to adequately train interviewers (especially the enhanced social understanding required).
• lack of training time may explain potential ineffectiveness of CI