The Cognitive Interview- Improving accuracy of EWT Flashcards
(19 cards)
What is the main strength with EWT and what are the problems arisen by?
S- real world application in helping police/ crime agencies to deal with serious cases
W- Problems are caused by leading questions/ post event discussions that damage investigations in unfair ways, reflecting in court i.e with false convictions
What did Fisher + Geiselman (1992) create?
They created the ‘Cognitive Interview’ as a technique that is used by police to interview witnesses of a crime in a trustworthy/effective way.
From creating the ‘Cognitive Interview’ what did Fisher and Geiselman (1992) review and propose following after?
They reviewed the diverse ways different police forces were using with witnesses and collected all the available research to recommend 4 most effective techniques in CI.
What are the 4 main techniques Fisher + Geiselman (1992) proposed in CI?
- Reporting everything
- Mental Reinstatement of original context
- Changing the order
- Changing the perspective
Explain the 1st technique, ‘Reporting everything’, proposed by Fisher + Geiselman (1992)
Reporting everything - even if it seems irrelevant, witnesses encouraged to include every detail.
This aims to increase consistency between actual event and revealed situation and can boost a witnesses recollection. Trivial details may trigger other useful details.
Explain the 2nd Technique, ‘ Mental Reinstatement of original context,’ proposed by Fisher and Geiselman (1992)
Witnesses encouraged to recreate the environment from the original incident, e.g ‘close your eyes, imagine you’re back at the scene, what were you feeling? What were you doing before the incident?’
Aims to help remember more details and increase context dependent memory.
Explain the 3rd Technique, ‘ Changing the order,’ proposed by Fisher and Geiselman (1992)
A witness may be asked to reverse the order of events so recalling from end to beginning, breaking the usual schema of going chronologically.
This aims to help ppts recall extra info and make links between distinct stages not obvious when going from start to end.
Also helps to prevent dishonesty as it’s harder to lie in this order.
Explain the 4th Technique, ‘ Changing the perspective,’ proposed by Fisher and Geiselman (1992). Provide an example.
Witness is encouraged to recall the incident from multiple perspectives e.g how event would appear to other witnesses.
Disrupts their expectations + encourages them to examine their memories more carefully.
E.g if event occurred in a shop, the person could have a schema for shopping and by changing perspective this could prevent them from just describing their normal schema for shopping.
What did Fisher et al. (1987) develop and why?
They developed the ‘Enhanced Cognitive Interview’ in response to police officers lacking the necessary skills to deliver the CI effectively.
What does the ECI include?
Includes an emphasis on allowing the witness to control the flow of info, avoiding interruptions, and reminding the witness to speak slowly and avoid guessing.
Why was the ‘Modified CI’ developed and what does it include?
It was developed to use CI for children
It stresses building a trustful relationship and removing the ‘change perspective’ component as children may find it difficult to do so.
What did Kohnken et al. (1999) conduct a meta-analysis on and what were the 2 results?
They conducted a meta analysis of 53 CI / Non CI studies and found a 34% increase in correct recall when using CI compared to a standard interview (one that lacks 4 components of the CI).
4/53 studies didn’t show the CI is more effective than the standard interview.
What are the 2 issues to Kohnken et al.’s (1999) meta analysis of CI studies?
- Most of the studies were lab-based, so lacks ecological validity
- Most studies had volunteer college students so difficult in generalising results.
In addition to the 2 results found in Kohnken’s (1999) study what did they also find an increase in ( 2 things ) and what does this suggest? ( issue)
They found an 81% increase of correct info and also a 61% increase of incorrect info with the CI.
Suggests there is an issue with an increase in all types of info, meaning that there is more the police has to check, requiring time.
What did Milne and Bull (2002) carry out a lab experiment on and what 2 components of the SI were best? What did this confirm in police officers beliefs?
They carried a lab experiment out with students and children.
They found that ‘report everything’ and ‘mental reinstatement’ gave the best recall and confirmed police officers’ suspicions that not all parts of the CI are as useful as each other.
What is the issue to CI regarding there being different versions used in different policing agencies? ( 2 things )
- CI is a collection of techniques that police forces choose from due to time constraints and discretion of officers.
- Makes it difficult to establish effectiveness of the technique as there isn’t a ‘standard’ CI to compare results against.
Following on from the issue to CI regarding there being different versions, what did Kebel and Wagstaff (1996) find and what did they suggest? ( 2 things )
- Some police forces e.g The Thames Valley police use the whole procedure, and some forces just use 1 or 2 techniques.
- Suggests that the technique of CI is too time consuming and therefore expensive to use in full.
What is the individual differences evaluation point to CI?
It is more effective in improving the recall of older witnesses compared to younger witnesses. This could be because older witnesses may be initially cautious about reporting what they saw.
In support of CI working better for older witnesses, what did Mello + Fisher (1996) compare and find from this?
They compared older (mean age 72 years) with younger (mean age 22 years) adult’s memory of a filmed simulated crime using either a CI or a standard interview (SI).
CI produced more info than the SI but, the advantage of the CL over the SL was greater for the older witnesses than the younger ones significantly.
