The Cognitive Interview Flashcards
Who created the Cognitive interview and how did they do it?
Fisher and Geiselman (1992) reviewed the relevant psychological literature on memory to make an ideal interview for the use of police.
The cognitive interview is a police technique which encourages them to recreate the original context in order to increase the accessibility of stored information by making associations.
What are the more 4 principles of the cognitive interview?
Report everything - the interviewer encourages that every detail of event should be reported, no matter how irrelevant.
Mental reinstatement of the original context - the interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate the environment and contacts from the incident.
Changing the order - the interviewer may try to make the interviewee look at the timeline in a different order.
Changing the perspective - the interviewer asks the interviewee to try and recall the incident through the eyes of another witness or the perpetrator.
What is the reasoning behind these two principles?
The first two are designed for the interviewee to scrutinise their account and to have many accurate details out of this.
The latter two are designed for the interviewee to retrieve information from multiple routes.
What studies have been done on the effectiveness of the cognitive interview?
Kohnken et al (1999) did a meta-analysis of 53 studies on average a 34% increase in accurate information from the CI interview compared to a standard interview.
Milne and Bull (2002) tested each individual component of the CI on Undergraduates and Children, comparing its results to a control where they were asked to ‘try again’. They found each individual component was similar but the combination of ‘Report Everything’ and ‘Reinstatement of the original context’ was significantly higher than other conditions.
What are the problems with using the CI?
Its effectiveness is hard to test as no longer a single procedure but a collection of techniques which are used interchangeably.
Kebbell and Wagstaff reported that in practise the CI tends to take too long for practicality.
The cognitive interview takes a lot of training to be conducted effectively.
What is the enhanced CI?
The enhanced cognitive interview is one that impliments more techiniques. But therefore places a higher demand on the interviewer.
Stein and Memon (2006) used this in Brazil with a university cleaning staff viewing an abduction video. They found the CI to have much more forensically useful information compared to the SI.
What studies are there on age and CI?
Mello and Fisher (1996) showed older and younger people a video of a filmed simulated crime using CI or SI. The CI was more useful than the SI, but was significantly better for older people than older.
