The Cognitive Interview Flashcards
Who developed the cognitive interview and why?
Gieselman (1984) to increased accuracy of witness recall events by providing cues to help with retrieval
What are the problems with standard interviews?
Lots of brief, direct and closed questions
Witnesses often interrupted and can’t talk freely
Issue of leading questions
Recall is better when witnesses are provided with a retrieval cue and rapport is built up with the witness
What are the 4 principles of the cognitive interview?
- Context/mental reinstatement of original context
- Report everything
- Recall in changed order
- Recall from changed perspective
Why is context/mental reinstatement done?
To recreate the physical and psychological environment of the original incident to create cues to help retrieve memory
Why do witnesses report everything?
Can aid in the recall of more important information and can help bring different memories together
What is the reason for recalling an event in a changed order and from a different perspective?
It removes cognitive biases and schemas of what a person would expect to happen in a certain scenario rather than what actually happened
What did Fisher (1987) suggest to improve the cognitive interview?
Actively listen
Ask open-ended questions
Pause after each response
Avoid interruption
Encourage use of imagery
Adapt language to suit the witness
Avoid judgemental comments
Minimise distractions
What are the strengths of the cognitive interview?
Gieselman et al (1985) - video of staged crime
Gieselman et al (1986) - blue rucksack
Kohnken et al (1999) - meta-analysis
Milne & Bull (2002)
What did Gieselman et al (1985) find? - staged crime
Participants watched a staged crime
Tested participants using either a standard interview or cognitive interview
Cognitive interview generated more information
What did Gieselman et al (1986) find? - rucksack
Staged situation - intruder wearing blue rucksack steals slide projector from classroom
A leading question that said the rucksack was green was asked
When asked the colour of the rucksack, the participants in the cognitive interview were less likely to recall the rucksack as green
What did Kohnken et al (1999) find?
Did a meta-analysis of 53 studies and found an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information that the cognitive interview gave compared to the standard interview
What did Milne & Bull (2002) find?
When participants interviewed with multiple cognitive interview techniques, recall was a lot higher rather than using just 1 technique
What are the disadvantages of the cognitive interview?
Time consuming
Lots of training
Lack of ecological validity of lab studies
Less successful with children
Why is the cognitive interview being time consuming bad?
Lots of time isn’t always available to the interviewer
Can cause police to be reluctant to use it
How does the cognitive interview require lots of training?
Menon et al (1994)
When experienced detectives got 4 hours of training, it didn’t produce a significant increase in information generated compared to the standard interview Cognitive interview
