improving accuracy of EWT- cognitive interview Flashcards
cognitive interview
method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories.
It uses 4 main techniques all based on evidence from psychological knowledge of human memory.
Fisher and Geiselmans argument of how the EWT could be improved
Could be improved if police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses.
what did Fisher and Geilelman make the 4 techniques based off of and what was the collective name for them?
They recommended that the 4 techniques should be based on psychological insights into how memory works and called the techniques collectively the Cognitive Interview (CI) to indicate its foundation in cognitive psychology.
what are the 4 main techniques to improve EWT
1) report everything- even if the witness thinks details are irrelevant because trivial details may be important and they may trigger other important memories.
2) reinstate the context- witness should return to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagine the environment (e.g. weather and what they could see) and their emotions during and after. This is related to context-dependent forgetting.
3) reverse the order- events should be recalled in a different order from original sequence (e.g. final to beginning point). This is done to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event must of happened rather than reporting actual events. Also prevents dishonesty (harder to produce untruthful account if they have to try remember it reversed).
4) change perspective- witness should recall event from another witness’s or the perpetrator’s percpective. This will disrupt the effect of expectations and also the effect of schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting (e.g. going to the shops) generates expectations of what would have happened and it’s the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened.
the enhanced cognitive interview (fisher) and an example of it in context
Fisher developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction.
e.g: interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it. The enhanced CI also includes ideas such as: reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended Q’s.
one strength of cognitive interview
(evaluation)
-strength is there’s evidence to support that the CI works/effectiveness of it.
-e.g. in a meta analysis 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 4 studies in the analysis showed no difference between the types of interview.
-this shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that’s stored in memory (available) but not immediately accessible.
one limitation of cognitive interview
(evaluation)
-limitation of the original I is that not all of its elements are equally effective or useful.
-Milne and Bull found that each of the 4 techniques used alone produces 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 a combination of them.
-This confirmed police officers’ suspicions that some aspects of CI are more useful than others. This shows some doubt on the credibility of the overall CI.
