What are the problems with the standard police interview?
- standard police interviews often involve the interviewer dominating the conversation and posing specific forced-choice questions (e.g., about the perpetrator’s race).
- unconscious use of leading questions during interviews can contaminate the witness’s memory of the incident.
- problems with this technique include disrupting the natural memory-search process and reducing the efficiency of memory retrieval.
What are the 4 main techniques used in the cognitive interview?
1) report everything
2) reinstate the context
3) reverse the order
4) change perspective
Why does the cognitive interview enhance recall?
- role of context reinstatement -> work on reconstructive memory
- use of context -> makes the event more meaningful
- better for recall of peripheral detail than central detail
When is cognitive interview less useful?
with children, when there is increased time between event and recall
What is involved in “mental reinstatement of context”?
- trying to mentally recreate an image of the situation, including details of the environment, such as the weather conditions and the individual’s emotional state including their feelings at the time of the incident -> may all act as cues/triggers to recall
- The aim of this technique is to help people to retrieve memories that are there using appropriate contextual and emotional cues.
- based on research into context-dependent forgetting.
What is involved in “report everything”?
- the interviewer encourages the witness to report all details about the event, even though these details may seem to be unimportant -> may highlight something that has been ‘overlooked’
- this technique works on the basis that even seemingly trivial details can trigger important memories
What is involved in “change of order”?
- the witness is asked to recall the scene in a different chronological order, e.g. from the end to the beginning -> verifies accuracy
- the rationale behind this is that reversing the order prevents people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than what actually happened.
- It also prevents dishonesty as it is harder to produce a dishonest account in reverse
What is involved in “change of perspective”?
- trying to mentally recreate the situation from different points of view, e.g. describing what another witness present at the scene would have seen -> promotes more ‘holistic’ view of the event which may enhance recall
- this is again used to disrupt the effect of schemas (what we would expect to happen in that situation) from affecting accurate recall of the even
What is the enhanced cognitive interview (CI) ?
- implementation of the cognitive interview revealed some officers lacked essential social skills, like interrupting witnesses.
- Fisher et al. (1987) addressed this by enhancing the cognitive interview with a focus on improving social dynamics.
- additional aspects include knowing when to establish or break eye contact, reducing witness anxiety, minimizing distractions, encouraging slow speech, and emphasizing the use of open-ended questions.
What is a strength of the cognitive interview?
✓ some elements of the full Cognitive Interview are useful
P: A strength is that some elements of the full Cognitive Interview are useful
E: Milne and Bull (2000) interviewed undergraduate students and children using just one component of the Cognitive Interview, and compared responses to a control group (standard police interview).
- They found that recall across each individual component was broadly similar and no different to the control group.
- However, they also found that a combination of ‘report everything and ‘reinstate the context’, produced better recall than any of the techniques individually.
A: This finding is a strength as it suggests that at least two of the techniques should be used to improve police interviewing of eyewitnesses even if the full Cognitive Interview isn’t used.
What is a strength of the cognitive interview?
✓ Kohnken et al’s (1999) support for the effectiveness of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI)
P: Another strength is support for the effectiveness of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI)
E: A meta analysis by Kohnken et al. (1999) combined data from 50 studies. The ECI consistently provided more correct information than the standard police interview.
A: This is a strength because studies such as this one indicate there are real practical benefits to the police of using the enhanced version of the cognitive interview in allowing the police a greater chance of catching and charging criminals, which is a benefit to society as a whole.
What is a limitation of the cognitive interview?
✘ using the Cognitive Interview in practice is too time consuming
P: A limitation of using the Cognitive Interview in practice is that it is too time consuming
E: The police have reported that they are reluctant to use the Cognitive Interview as it takes much more time to carry out than the standard police interview. For example, more time is needed to establish rapport with the witness and to provide time for them to relax.
- The Cognitive Interview also requires specialist training. However, many forces have not been able to provide any more than a few hours to do so.
A: This is a weakness of the technique as it means that it is unlikely that the ‘proper’ version of the Cognitive Interview is actually used, which might explain why police have not been that impressed by it and why its use has not been widespread.
What is a limitation of the cognitive interview?
✘ research may be unreliable because of variations of the CI
P: A limitation is that research may be unreliable because of variations of the Cognitive Interview.
E: Studies of effectiveness use slightly different techniques; different researchers may use variations of the Cognitive Interview or Enhanced Cognitive Interview and police forces evolve their own methods.
A: This means that it is difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the Cognitive Interview in general.
