What are the four cognitive interviews:
- context reinstatement
- report everything
- recall from changed perspective
- recall in reverse order
What is Context Reinstatement?
The interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate the environment (including the weather, distinctive smells, any people nearby etc), and how they were feeling, by asking the interviewee to think back to before, during and after the event.
Why does Context Reinstatement lead to better EWT?
- leads to better EWT as there is a mental consistency between incident and mental recreation. The witness will recall more details.
- also helps with accuracy as mental recreation will trigger details of the actual event
What is Report Everything?
Report every detail about the event that you can recall even if it seems trivial.
Information about the event should be reported on, even if it does not seem to have a bearing on the crime.
Why does Report Everything lead to better EWT?
- unrestrained recall may reveal details which were mentally ‘edited out’ without realising. That way, the interviewer gets all the information relevent to the event so that they can make a judgement about what they believe is important
- may uncover information which acts as a cue for further information
What is Recall from Changed Perspective?
You are asked to mentally recreate the situation from a different perspective. For example; describe the incidient from the viewpoint of other people who were present at the time.
Why does Recall from Changed Perspective lead to better EWT?
- less likely to rely on your usual schemas to remember and describe the event as they are compelled to use the perspective of others, leads to more accurate recall.
What is Recall in Reverse Order?
- the interviewer encourages the interviewee to describe the event in reverse order from last detail/moment of the crime, or to start with an aspect of the scene which seems most memorable and work backwards from that point
Why does Recall in Reverse Order lead to better EWT?
- Makes you less likely to rely on usual schemas to remember and describe the event which leads to more accurate recall
- Also can verify the account of the original testimony when the event is described in chronological order.
12 Marker A01:
Technique 1 + How it works
Technique 2 + How it works
Technique 3 + How it works
Technique 4 + How it works
Strength of CI: supporting evidence that it improves EWT
- Milne and Bull: each technique used individually produced more information than the standard police interview.
- A combination of report everything and context reinstatement produced better recall than other conditions.
- SB: shows that Cognitive interview is an effective technique when gathering EWT.
- Thus showing that Cognitive interview is a useful and valuable tool in EWT.
Strength of CI: supporting evidence for its accuracy compared to other techniques
- Geiselman et al showed ppts videos of simulated violent crimes. 48 hours later, they were interviewed about the films by a police officer using cognitive interview, a standard police interview, and hypnosis.
- Found: Cognitive interview elicited the most accurate recall, followed by hypnosis and then standard interview.
- SB: shows that CI is effective in gathering EWT especially in comparison to other techniques.
- Thus as it is the best method of gathering EWT, it increases in value.
Weakness of CI: requires significant time and resources
- Since cognitive interview uses a range of different techniques to gather information from witnesses, it requires more time compared to standard interview.
- WB: cognitive interview is unsuitable for situations where a large number of witnesses need to be interviewed quickly.
- Also, cognitive interview requires the investment of money to provide special training to police officers.
- WB: many police forces face financial restrictions not being able to provide training.
- Thus, due to these requirements of time and resources, the Cognitive interview cannot be implemented in all situations, reducing in utility.
Weakness of CI: it increases inaccurate information.
- Kohnken et al conducted a meta-analysis of 55 studies into CI and found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information when compared to a standard police interview.
- WB: CI encourages witnesses to recall more information but we cannot guarantee whether that information is valid or not.
- Therefore, CI needs to be used carefully in real life as the information drawn out may be inaccurate, which reduces the validity of CI.
