Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: Cognitive interview

Who created the cognitive interview?

Fisher and Geiselman argued that EWT could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses.

So they created the cognitive interview, which is based on psychological knowledge of human memory.

What is the cognitive interview?

A method of interviewing eyewitnesses use to help them retrieve more accurate memories.

It uses 4 main techniques

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

What is technique 1 ‘Report everything’?

Witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event, even if it may seem irrelevant or they don’t feel confident about it.

What is technique 2 ‘Reinstate the context’?

The witness should return to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagine the environment (e.g. what the weather was) and their emotions (e.g. whether they were happy or sad)

What is technique 3 ‘Reverse the order’?

Events should be recalled in a different order from the original sequence.

E.g. from the final point back to the beginning or middle to beginning

This prevents people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than reporting the actual events.

It prevents dishonesty too as its harder to produce an untruthful account if they have to reverse it.

What is technique 4 ‘Change perspective’?

Witnesses should recall the incident from other people’s perspectives.

E.g. how it would have appeared to other witnesses or to the perpetrator.

This disrupts the effect of expectations and schema on recall.

The schema you have for a particular setting generates expectations of what would have happened and it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened!

What is the enhanced cognitive interview?

Fisher et al developed additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction.

E.g. the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it.

The ECI includes ideas such as reducing EW anxiety, minimising distractions and asking open-ended questions.

Who created the enhanced cognitive interview?

Fisher et al

What is a strength of the cognitive interview?

Evidence support

A meta analysis by Kohnken et al combined data from 55 studies comparing the CI with the standard police interview.

The CI gave a 41% increase in accurate info compared with the standard interview.

This shows that CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall info that is stored in memory but not immediately accessible.

COUNTERPOINT

Kohnken et al also found an increase in the amount of inaccurate info recalled by the PPs.

Cognitive interviews may sacrifice quality of EWT in favour of quantity

This means that police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from cognitive interviews with caution!

What is a limitation of the cognitive interview?

Some elements may be more useful

Milne and Bull found that using a combination of ‘report everything’ and ‘reinstate the context’ produced better recall than any of the other techniques or combination of them.

This confirmed police offers’ suspicions that some CI techniques are more useful than others.

This casts some doubt on the credibility of the overall cognitive interview

What is another limitation of the cognitive interview?

CI is time-consuming

More time is needed to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax.

Kebbell and Wagstaff found that the CI requires special training and many forces don’t have the resources to provide more than a few hours.

This suggests that the CI is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on a few techniques instead.

What is another limitation of the cognitive interview?

Police officers have taken a ‘pick and mix’ approach to the techniques in the CI.

This means it is hard to compare the effectiveness of different approaches in research studies.

COUNTERPOINT

‘Pick and mix’ approach is more flexible.

It means officers can develop their own approach according to what works best for them.