The Cognitive Interview Flashcards
Who proposed the use of cognitive interview?
Fisher and Geiselman in 1992, based on memory research, including Tulving’s encoding specificity hypothesis.
What is step one of a cognitive interview?
Report everything:
Witnesses encouraged to include every detail even if it seems irrelevant. No questions are asked (due to Loftus and Palmer’s work on leading questions).
What is step two of a cognitive interview?
Reinstate the context:
Based on context dependent memory (Tulving) and context dependent forgetting (Godden and Baddeley). Could include revisiting crime scenes, looking at photos, walking through whole day from start to end (eg weather, emotion).
What is step three of a cognitive interview?
Reverse the order:
Done to prevent people using expectations from schemas of events and to prevent dishonesty - harder to lie if you have to reverse the account.
What is step four of a cognitive interview?
Change the perspective:
What would others have seen? What would you have seen from different angles? Also to disrupt the expectations from schema.
What is the enhanced cognitive interview?
Fisher et al 1987 developed additional techniques to enhance the interview based on social dynamics, eg when to establish eye contact and when to look away, reducing anxiety of the witness, using open ended questions and getting witnesses to speak slowly.
What research supports the effectiveness of cognitive interviews?
Kohnken et al (1999) meta analysis of 55 studies comparing cognitive interview to standard police interview. CI average 41% increase in info compared to standard.
What is a drawback of cognitive interviews?
They are very time consuming.
What did Milne and Bull find in 2002 in relation to cognitive interviews?
Step 1 and 2 produced better recall than any of the elements used alone or other combinations. Each individual step used alone was also more effective than standard - some aspects more than others.
