Topic 3 - Memon and Higham - A review of the cognitive interview Flashcards
What was the aim?
To provide a review of CI and issues that need to be considered in relation to research into CI and its use in the field
What are the four sections?
Effectiveness of components, comparison interviews, measures of memory and quality of training
What did effectiveness of components include?
Mental context reinstatement, free recall, recall from a variety of perspectives and varied order retrieval
What was mental context reinstatement?
Witnesses are asked to mentally take themselves back to the scene of the crime and imagine the noise, the smells, whether it was dark or light, who else was there etc.
How was mental context reinstatement effective?
Milne showed that context reinstatement used alone obtains as much information from witnesses as the complete CI procedure although other psychological research into the effectiveness of context has produced mixed results
What was report everything?
This is where the witness is given the instructions to recall without ‘screening, al the detains from the to-be-remembered event, even if they consider them irrelevant or only partially remember them
How was Report everything effective?
Memon and Bull suggested this procedure can be important for putting together details from different witnesses to the same crime
What is recall from a variety of different perspectives?
This technique tries to encourage the witness to place themselves in the shoes of the victim (if the witness is not a victim) or of another witness to report what they would have seen
How was recall from a variety of different perspectives effective?
Could lead to witness fabricating data, Milne - can produce as much accurate info as the other techniques but does not increase the amount of info
What is recall in different temporal orders?
Encourage witnesses to recall in a variety of orders, for example, from the end, the middle or from the most memorable event
How was recall in different temporal orders effective?
More effective to recall in forward order once followed by reverse order, rather than to make two attempts at recall from the beginning
What did comparison interviews include?
Standard interviewing, guided memory interviewing and structured interviewing
What did they find relation to standard interviewing?
Not good for comparisons as they’re too varied and not standardised so meaningful data is impossible to collect
What did they find in relation to guided memory interviews?
Relies on context reinstatement alone so its useful for comparisons against CI studies to deduce whether increased information from CI is a result of context reinstatement alone or a combination of componenets
What did they find in relation to structures interviewing?
Relies on establishing a rapport, uses open questions and avoids interruptions but doesn’t use cognitive techniques so its good for showing importance of cognitive components.
