Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony - the cognitive interview

Description of cognitive interview AO1

• Geiselman et al developed an interviewing technique, the cognitive interview which has 4 distinct components

  mental reinstatement, report everything, change the order, change the perspective

mental reinstatement

• the interviewee is encouraged too mentally recreate the physical and psychological environment of the original incident - e.g how they were feeling, were they hungry?

• interviewer might ask - think of objects that were there, the colours of them, think about what you were doing - this is the make the memories accessible, they are there just need to be accessed - using emotional and contextual cues

report everything

the interviewee is encouraged to give every little detail that my be important. This recall needs to be as much as you can even if it doesn’t seem relevant

• interviewer might say do not leave anything out, im interested in everything, don’t think things aren’t important

change the order

• the interviewee is asked to consider an alternative timeline of the incident fro empaling by reversing the order

• interviewer might say - I would like you to tell me what happened from the end to the start, then tell me what happens backwards bc recollections are influenced by schemas (what expected to happen) - prevents pre existing schema influencing what you recall

change the perspective

• the interviewee is asked to recall the incident from another perspective

• the interviewer might say - try to recall the incident from the perspective of another person involved in the incident - done to disrupt the schema affect on recall

one strength of CI comes rfrom

The amount of supporting research

Kohnken et al (1999) conducted a meta-analysis of 53 studies and found, on average, an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the CI.

However, it must be noted that the effectiveness of the CI may be due to individual elements of the CI rather than the whole process.

This suggests that overall the the CI is an effective technique for increasing the accessibility of stored information

AO3 however a criticsm is ..

Is the effectiveness has largely been in terms of quantity of information, rather than quality

Kohnken et al (1999) found an 81% increase in the amount of correct information generated, but also a 61% increase in the amount of incorrect information (false positives) when using the enhanced CI.

The procedure is designed to enhance the quantity (amount) of correct recall without compromising the quality

This suggests that the cognitive interview is only useful in increasing the quantity of information and that police need to treat all information collected from the CI with caution.