Witness Interviewing

Question 1

The ‘Cognitive Interview’ 
(Geiselman and Fisher, 1984)

Answer 1

Phases

• Greet/establish rapport
• Explain aims
• Free recall
• Questioning
• Vary retrieval mnemonic
• Investigatively important questions
• Closure

Four main techniques (mnemonics)

• Report everything
• Mental reinstatement of context
• Reverse temporal order
• Change perspective

Question 2

Testing the mnemonics:
 Reverse Temporal Order

Answer 2

Theory
Reducing negative impacts of scripts (Shank & Abelson, 1977)
Vs.
Temporal clustering central to Context Maintenance and Retrieval - Polyn, Norman, and Kahana (2008)

Method
Mock crime witness – video of mobile phone theft
Retrieval coded for new items – free recall / second recall phases

Question 3

Testing the mnemonics: 
Mental reinstatement of context

Answer 3

Theory
Mental reinstatement of context technique and the encoding-specificity principle (Tulving & Thompson, 1973)
Vs.
Deficits in episodic memory in individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (Klein, Chan & Loftus, 1999
MRC demands language and concurrent processing abilities, ASD individuals find difficult (e.g., Gabig, 2008)
Method
Unguided versus MRC versus Sketch RC techniques

Question 4

The problem with investigative decisions…

Answer 4

People make crucial, time-critical decisions under uncertainty
Demands can outstrip cognitive resources  suboptimal decision-making
Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (1993)
“the most common type of error in crime investigation is that of decision-making”
Little research on SIO Decision-making

Question 5

Cognitive biases

Answer 5

Satisficing
Simon (1980) – individuals minimise ‘search’
Confirmation bias
Wason (1977) – individuals seek confirmatory evidence

Question 6

Investigative expertise

Answer 6

Method
Insurance fraud handling; Ethnographic observation
Realistic, rich, longitudinal, non-invasive, socially interactive, capturing exceptions and commonalities
Observations, interviews, meetings  field notes

Explanation building
Hypothesis testing
Procedural decision making

Question 7

Confirmation bias?: Serious crimes decision log analysis

Answer 7

Formal repository of decisions and actions made during the course of a major investigation.
Summarisation; Offence; MO; SIOs; Victim(s); Suspect(s); Witnesses; outcome
Timeline representation (Topic/hypothesis/evidence)