Memory- Cognitive interview Flashcards
Who created the cognitive interview?
Fisher + Geiselman (1992)
Why did they create the cognitive interview?
-To improve the accuracy of EWT by using police interviews
-These techniques were based on psychological evidence about how the memory works
Define the cognitive interview
-A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories
What are the 4 stages of the cognitive interview?
-Report everything
-Reinstate the context
-Reverse the order
-Change perspective
What does reporting everything involve?
-Witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event even if it seems irrelevant
-May not be confident about the datils but should include them anyway
-Trivial details may be important but may trigger other important memories
What does reinstating the context involve?
-Witness should return to the original crime scence ‘in their mind’ and imagine the environment (eg. weather, what they could see, emotions)
-This is related to context depending on forgetting
What does reversing the order involve?
-Events hsould be recalled in a different chronological order
to the original sequence
-Prevents them from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happend instaed of the actual order
-Prevents dishonesty
What does changing the perspective involve?
-Witness should recall the incident from other people’s perspective (how it appeared to other witnesses or the perpetrator
-Disrupts the effects of schema and expectations on recall
-The schema you have on a particular setting generates expectations of what happened which means the schema is often recalled and not what happened
Who enhanced the CL and what did they include?
-Fisher
-Added some extra techniques which focussed on the social dynamics of the interaction
What were the dynamics in ECL?
-When to not/use eye contact
-Reduce eyewitness anxiety
-Minimising distractions
-Asking open-ended questions
-Getting the eyewitness to speak slowly
Give a limitation of the cognitive interview (quality)
-The CL sacrifices the quality of information for the quantity
-The procedure is designed to enhance the quantity of correct recall without the quality (the amount of correct recall (as a percentage of total recall)
-Koehnken et al. (1999) found that witnesses recalled more incorrect information when interviewed with the cognitive interview compared to the standard interview technique
-This may be because more detailed recall increases the chances of making mistakes.
-This means that police need to treat all information collected from the CL with caution as it does not guarantee accuracy
Give a strength of the cognitive interview (supporting research)
-Large amount of supporting research
-A meta-analysis of 53 studies found that on average an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information recalled compared to standard interviews
-However, most of these studies were student volunteers and tested in a lab which lacks ecological validity
-Miline and Bull (2002) found that when participants were interviewed using a combination of ‘report everything and mental reinstatement’ components the CL recall was significantly higher than using just one component
-Overall the CL is effective at increasing the accessibility of stored info
Give a limitation of the cognitive interview (CL in practice)
-CL takes a lot of time and training needed to implement it
-From interviews with police, kebbel and Wagstaff report a problem with the CL in practice
-police officers suggest that this technique requires more time and effort than is regularly available
-They prefer to use deliberate strategies aimed at limiting their eyewitness report to the minimum amount of information required
-the CL requires specialist training and many forces may not be able to provide more than a few hours
-These limitations have meant the use of CL in interviews has not been widespread
Give another limitation of the cognitive interview (comparisons)
-A problem evaluating the effectiveness of the CL when it is used in the real world is difficult as it is not just one procedure but a collection of techniques
-Thames Valley police do not use the changing perspectives elements
-Many forces only use reinstation of context and reporting everything
-Makes it hard to establish the overall effectiveness of the technique without using all components
