The Cognitive Interview

Cognitive interview

- A method of questioning eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories. It uses four main techniques, all based on evidence-based psychological knowledge of human memory- report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order, and change perspective

Report everything

- Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of an event, even if it seems irrelevant or the witness is not confident about it. Seemingly trivial details could be important and may trigger other memories

Reinstate the context

- The witness returns to the original crime scene 'in their mind' and imagine the environment (e.g. the weather, what they could see) and their emotions (e.g. what they felt). This is based on the concept of context-dependent forgetting. Cues from the environment may trigger recall

Reverse the order

- Events should be recalled in a different order to how they occurred E.g. From end to beginning
This is done to prevent people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than reporting the actual events. It also prevents dishonesty (harder for people to produce an untruthful account if they have to do this)

Change perspective

- Witnesses should recall the incident from other people's perspectives. For example, how it would have appeared to other witnesses or the perpetrator. This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and the effect of schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting generate expectations of what would have happened, the schema is then recalled rather than what actually happened

The enhanced cognitive interview

- Fisher et al (1987) developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction. For example, the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it. Also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, asking open-ended questions, etc

Evaluation: Strengths

- Evidence that it works. A meta-analysis by Kohnken et al (1999) combined data from 55 studies comparing the CI (and ECI) with the standard police interview. The CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compared with the standard interview. Only four studies showed no difference between the types of interview

- This shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory but not immediately accessible

Evaluation: Weaknesses

- Not all of its elements are equally effective/useful. Milne and Bull (2002) found that each of the four techniques used alone produced more information than the standard police interview. But they also found that using a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements or combination of them, confirming police officers' suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others

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

Evaluation: Weaknesses

- Police officers may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes more time and training than the standard police interview, e.g. more time is needed to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax. The CI also requires special training and many forces do not have the resources to provide more than a few hours (Kebbell and Wagstaff 1997)

- This suggests that the complete CI is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on just a few key elements