Cognitive Interview

1. Cognitive Interview What is it? Research into the effectiveness of CI Evaluation

2. What is Cognitive Interview? A method of interviewing based on techniques to improve memory recall. Aimed to reduce leading questions To prevent frequent interruptions, which made it hard for the witness to concentrate fully on the process of retrieval, and thus reduced recall Focus on ALL of the senses (previously under-emphasised) Be more “witness-led” Reduce the use of close-ended questions

3. Two principles from Psychology Several retrieval paths so information not available in one technique could be available to another. Hence: change the order change the perspective. A memory trace is made up of several features, so use as many retrieval cues as possible. Hence: Context reinstatement: eg how did you feel: how did it smell: what were you doing at the time? Report everything.

4. Main aspects. • Report everything • Recreate original context • Change order • Change perspective (Fisher and Geiselman, 1986)

5. Effectiveness • Fischer and Geisleman (1986) • 51 non-student participants watched films of violent crimes and were interviewed 48 hours later. • The cognitive interview elicited significantly more correct information from the subjects than did the standard police interview. • There is research support • Kohnken et al completed meta-analyis of 53 studies and found a 34% increase in correct recall when compared to standard interviewing techniques.

6. Evaluation • It is time consuming to train inexperienced staff and therefore costly. • Also time consuming to actually conduct - police in the field say that it takes too long. If they want information quickly, they are likely to use other techniques. • Can sometimes generate too much information. • Hard to evaluate as many versions of CI • Some forces use some or all of the stages/techniques and therefore it is difficult to control all the variables. • The effectiveness of the approach cannot conclusively support CI.