PAPER 1 - MEMORY - cognitive interview

Question 1

what is a cognitive interview?

Answer 1

a police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime that attempts to increase accessibility of stored information by using multiple retrieval strategies

Question 2

what are the 4 retrieval strategies?

Answer 2

• mental reinstatement
• report everything
• change order
• change perspective

Question 3

what are the differences between cognitive and standard interviews?

Answer 3

STANDARD INTERVIEW
- interviewer does a lot of talking
- asks specific questions
- questions may be leading
- witnesses discouraged from adding additional information
COGNITIVE INTERVIEW
- avoids use of direct question
- encourages individual to recreate original context in their head to increase recall

Question 4

why is the cognitive interview technique thought to work?

Answer 4

• by varying routes in cognitive interview can increase recall
• effectiveness of reinstating context can be explained by the encoding specificity model
• some strategies reduce the impact of pre-existing schemas on recall

Question 5

what is mental reinstatement of context?

Answer 5

interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate both physical and physiological environment from original incident
- memories more accessible

Question 6

what is the ‘report everything’ retrieval strategy?

Answer 6

interviewer encouraged to report every single detail of the event
- memories are interconnected to one another so the recollection of one may cue other memories

Question 7

what is the ‘change order’ strategy?

Answer 7

interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident to avoid recollections being influenced by our schema

Question 8

what is the ‘change perspective’ retrieval technique?

Answer 8

the interviewee is asked to recall the incident from a different perspective
- this disrupts effect of schemas on recall

Question 9

what does the meta analysis from Kohnken (1999) suggest?

Answer 9

the effectiveness/accuracy able to be obtained in meta analysis is 34% higher than a cognitive interview

Question 10

which 2 components together seem to have the most impact according to Khonken?

Answer 10

• report everything
• quality vs quantity - 81% increase of correct information, but also 61% increase of incorrect information

Question 11

which age group has it been found particularly useful for?

Answer 11

older witnesses

Question 12

what are the strengths of cognitive interviews?

Answer 12

• more accurate information recalled (Kohnken)
• particularly effective in older adults, helps to overcome negative stereotypes/ barriers

Question 13

what are the limitations of cognitive interviews?

Answer 13

• requires more time than is often available
• lots of information doesn’t guarantee accuracy
• specialist training
• difficulty establishing effectiveness - may be due to only some of the elements
• can also increase incorrect info (Kohnken 81% increase in correct info, but 61% increase in incorrect info too)