Cognitive interview Flashcards
Improving accuracy of eyewitness testimony
What is a cognitive interview?
Method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories.
What did Fisher and Geiselman argue?
EWT could be improved if police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses
4 main techniques
What is meant by report everything?
Encouraged to include every single detail
Even if irrelevant
Or not confident about info
Trivial details may be more important or may trigger other important memories
What is meant by reinstate the context?
Return to original crime scene in their mind
Imagine environment
Emotions
Context dependent forgetting
What is meant by reverse the order?
Recall in different order from original sequence
Prevent people reporting their expectations
Prevents dishonest - harder for people to produce untruthful account
What is meant by change perspective?
Recall incident from other peoples perspectives
Disrupts effect of expectations
Disrupts effect of schema on recall
Schema you have for particular setting generates expectations of what would have happened
Schema is recalled rather then what actually happened.
What is the enhanced cognitive interview according to Fisher et al?
Additional elements of CI
Focus on social dynamics of the interaction
Eg. Interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it
Reducing eyewitness anxiety
Minimising distractions
Getting witness to speak slowly
Open ended questions
What is an evaluation of cognitive interview?
Support for the effectiveness of the CI
Kohnken et al
Meta analysis
55 studies comparing cognitive itnerview with standard police interview.
CI - 41% increase in accurate info
4 studies in analysis showed no difference between types of interview
Showing CI effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory but not immediately accessible
What is an evaluation of cognitive interview?
Counterpoint for effectiveness of cognitive interview
Kohnken et al
Found increase in amount of inaccurate info recalled by participants
Issue ECI, produced more incorrect details than the CI
May sacrifice quality of EWT in favour of quantity
Meaning the police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from CI/ECI with caution
What is an evaluation of cognitive interview?
The CI is time consuming
Police officers may be reluctant to use CI
Takes more time and training than the standard police interview
More time needed to establish rapport and allow them to relax
Special training required
Suggesting complete CI is not realistic method for police officers to use and might be better to focus on just one key element.
What is an evaluation of cognitive interview?
Some elements may be more useful
Not all of its elements are equally effective or useful.
Milne and Bull
Each of the 4 techniques used alone produced more information than standard police interview
Using combination of report everything and reinstate context produced better recall than any of the other elements or combination of them.
Confirming police officers suspicions that some aspects of CI are more useful than others
Cast some doubt on credibility of overall cognitive interview.
