Improving accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony

Cognitive interview

Fischer and Gieselman (1985, 1992)

The cognitive interview is a procedure used by police when interviewing witnesses to crimes. It was based on the research of psychologists like Loftus who has shown that memory is not like a video camera. It involves using multiple ‘retrieval strategies’ to increase the accuracy of memories

Mental reinstatement of original context

Mentally reinstate the context of the event, recall the scene, weather, thoughts and feelings at the time

This can help witnesses retrieve forgotten memories by giving them contextual and emotional cues from when the event happened

Report everything

Report every detail possible even if it seems trivial or irrelevant

Memories are often interconnected so by recalling an irrelevant piece of information it may then cue a whole lot of information

Change order

Change the order of recall so that the events are reported in different orders, moving backwards and forwards in time

Witnesses may fill in blanks based on what they expect to happen in a situation because of their schemas, by changing the order around it may prevent this from happening

Change perspective

Try to describe the episode as it would have been seen from different points of view

Witnesses may fill in blanks based on what they expect to happen in a situation because of their schemas, by changing the perspective it may prevent this from happening

Research- Gieselman et al (1985)

Aim: Gieselman (1985) set out to investigate the effectiveness of the cognitive interview

Method: Participants viewed a film of a violent crime and after 48 hours were interviewed by a policeman using on of the three methods: cognitive interview, standard interview by Los Angeles police, interview using hypnosis. Number of facts accurately recalled and the number of errors made were recorded

Result: Average number of correctly recalled facts for the cognitive interview was 41.2, hypnosis was 38.0 and for standard interview it was 29.4 number of facts accurately recalled and the numbers of errors in each condition

Conclusion: The cognitive interview leads to better memory for events, with witnesses able to recall more relevant information compared with a traditional interview method

Evaluation points

Research support +

Real life evidence +

Exaggerated effectiveness -

Practical problems -