Memory: The Cognitive Interview

Question 1

What is the cognitive interview (CI)?

Answer 1

a questioning technique used by the police, designed to increase the amount of information a witness can retrieve and improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Question 2

What does the standard interview involve? What are the problems?

Answer 2

• the police will ask questions and the witness will answer the questions
• problems:
• the witness may miss out important information if they are not directly asked about it, or if they are interrupted
• the witness may give short answers such as yes or no, and so their answers may lack detail
• leading questions could decrease the inaccuracy of the answers

Question 3

What are the four main techniques of the cognitive interview (RRRC)?

Answer 3

• report everything
• reinstate the context
• reverse the order
• change the perspective

Question 4

What is report everything? Why does it help?

Answer 4

witnesses are asked to recall as much information about the incident as they can, whether they think it is relevant or not (this ensures no key details are missed)

Question 5

What is reinstate the context? What does it involve? Why does it help? What does it reduce?

Answer 5

• the witness is asked to imagine the external and internal environments present at the moment of the incident
• this involves imagining the physical surroundings and the emotions the witness felt at the time
• the external and internal cues may jog the witnesses memory
• this helps to reduce retrieval failure

Question 6

What is reverse the order?

Answer 6

• the witness is asked to recall the incident in a different chronological order to the original sequence
• e.g. starting from the end to the beginning of events
• this stops the witness from reconstructing events based on their schemas (their mental frameworks built from previous experiences)

Question 7

What is changing the perspective?

Answer 7

• the witness is asked to recall the incident from a different point of view (e.g. from across the room)
• this also prevents with witness from reconstructing events based on their schemas
• this can also provide cues to jog the witness’s memory

Question 8

What is the enhanced cognitive interview? What does it involve?

Answer 8

• it is the same as the cognitive interview, with the addition of elements that focus on the social dynamics between the witness and the interviewer
• it involves appropriate eye contact, reducing the witness’s anxiety (helping them to relax), minimising distractions, and allowing the witness to speak openly judgement or personal comments

Question 9

Strength of CI: Kohnken et al - meta-analysis

Answer 9

• research support
• was a meta-analysis that combined data from 50 studies
• the cognitive interview consistently provided more accurate information than the standard interview
• this shows that the cognitive interview improves the accuracy of EWT, and so helps the police
• ext: because data was taken from 50 studies, there is a huge amount of data, so it is likely that the findings are representative of the population. however, they relied on data collected by other psychologists, so the data may not all be valid, which could decrease the validity of this meta-analysis

Question 10

Strength of CI: practical applications

Answer 10

• the CI is used to increase the accuracy of EWT
• this is useful to the police and courts, as accurate EWT lead to more correct convictions
• this is a strength, because the point of psychology is to benefit society
• ext: furthermore, the enhanced cognitive interview was introduced to further improve the accuracy of EWT. the enhanced cognitive interview involves building trust between the witness and the police, and helping the witness to relax, all of which may lead to more accurate information

Question 11

Weakness of CI: time consuming

Answer 11

• the CI is very time consuming, and if there are many witnesses, it would take a very long time to interview all of them
• this may lead to slower convictions, as it takes a lot of time to gather information using the CI
• additionally, the CI requires special training, and many police forces do not have the time or funding to implement this
• this means that the CI is not as useful