Cognitive Interview

Question 1

What is the CI?

Answer 1

Encourages witnesses to recreate original crime to increase accessibility of stored information

Question 2

Who developed the CI?

Answer 2

Geiselman et al (1984)

Question 3

What is mental reinstatement of original context?

Answer 3

Questions include
- “What was the weather like?”
- “What objects were there?”
- “ What had you been doing?”
Aim is to make memories more accessible and need proper appropriate contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories

Question 4

What is the report everything technique?

Answer 4

Report anything even if it is irrelevant and questions include:
-“please do not leave anything out”
- “tell anything that pops up into your head even if you think it is unimportant”
Connection of memories may help ability to retrieve another

Question 5

What is the change in order technique?

Answer 5

Reversing order when the events occurred, recollection is influenced by schema, e.g. thinking about a restaurant you visited, recollection may be influenced on what normally happens, being seated.

Question 6

What is the changing perspective technique?

Answer 6

Imagining what other witnesses would have seen

Question 7

Research on effectiveness of the CI:

Answer 7

34% increase on effectiveness on correct information generated by the CI. Milne and Bull (2002) found when using combinations of ‘report everything’ and ‘mental reinstatement’ their recall was a lot higher then just using one of these components

Question 8

Quality may suffer:

Answer 8

CI is designed to increase quantity of information and not the quality. When the CI was used, Kohnken et al (1999) found 81% increase in correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information

Question 9

Comparisons are difficult:

Answer 9

Some police will only use certain components which means it is hard to establish overall effectiveness of the technique when using all components