Cognitive interview

The Cognitive interview was developed by Fisher following criticism in the 1970s/80s of the traditional standard police interview

The Standard Police Interview

Fisher and Geiselman (1992) identified what is wrong with the Standard Interview

-Revolves around the interviewer rather than the witness, as the interviewer does most of the talking

- Asks specific questions that usually give forced responses/answers (closed questions)

- Questions were often predetermined from a written checklist rather than being fluid and in response to witnesses’ answers

-Witnesses are discouraged from giving further info and leading questions may be unconsciously used.

All this contaminates the witnesses memory – leading to higher levels of inaccuracy.

This led to the development of several interviewing techniques based on psychological principles: which became known as the cognitive interview.

Fisher and Geiselman (1992) reviewed relevant information on memory and related this to how police interviewed in real life

For example, we remember better with retrieval cues – mentally reinstate the context of the event being recalled

The original cognitive interview could be characterised by four distinct components:report everything,reinstate,context,change the order and change the perspective

Report Everything

encourage the reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything. Witnesses should not leave anything out, even if they think it is insignificant or irrelevant.Memories are interconnected with one another so that recollection of one item may then cue a whole lot of other measures.Small pieces of information can be pieced together from other witnesses to give a clearer picture of what happened.

Reinstate Context

Mental reinstatement of original context –witnesses are encouraged to mentally recreate the physical and psychological environment of the original incident e.g. sights, sounds, and weather, how they felt.The aim is to make memories accessible through contextual and emotional cues to aid retrieval (encoding specificity principle)

Change the Order

recall alternative ways through the timelines of the event in a different order e.g. reversing the order.Recollection is influenced by primary and recency effect and schemas. If you recall from the end of the event backwards this prevents your pre-existing schema influencing what you recall and verify accuracy

Change the Perspective

witnesses are asked to recall from multiple perspectives e.g. how it would appear to other witnesses, the victim, the suspect.This is done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall and gives a holistic view.

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview:

Some additional factors were added that focus on the social interactions required to ensure the effectiveness of the interview, such as:

-When to use eye contact and when to stop using it (as an interviewer)

-Reduce Anxiety (police interview room – calming, breathing slowly)

-Minimise any distractions.

-Only ask open ended questions.

Evaluation

Individual differences – CI may be particularly useful with older witnesses (old people prone to leading qs) Difficulties overcome as witnesses are told “report regardless of significance”. For example, Mello & Fisher (1996) compared older men to younger men's’ memory of a filmed simulated crime using either a CI or SI. The CI produced more information than the SI but significantly the CI was significantly better for older men

Quantity vs. Quality: The procedure is designed to enhance quantity of correct recall without compromising quality. However, Kohnken (1999) found an 81% increase of incorrect information when the enhanced CI was compared to a standard interview. This means that police need to treat all information collected from CIs with caution – doesn’t guarantee accuracy and may actually sacrifice quality in favour of quantity

Time problems with the CI – Kebbnell and Wagstaff (1996) say officers say it takes more time and training than is available – prefer to use deliberate strategies aimed to limit an eyewitnesses report to the minimum amount of key elements of information that the officer feels is necessary as it is unrealistic to implement effectively and promptly.

- Difficulties in establishing effectiveness – there is no longerust one procedure but a collection of related techniques.

Thames Valley Police are trained practically the same however, they do not use the changing perspectives component