The Cognitive Interveiw

The Cognitive Interveiw

1. Research shows that the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies is affected by many factors. The cognitive interview technique was developed by Geiselman et al in 1984 to try to increase the accuracy of witnesses recall of events during poilce questioning

   • What happens in a cognitive interview
     • • The interviewer tries to make the witness relaxed and tailors his/her language to suit the witness • The witness recreates the environmental and internal context of the crime scene • The witness reports absolutely everything that they can remember about the crime • The witness is asked to recall details of the crime in different orders • The witness is asked to recall the event from various different perspectives l comment • The interviewer avoids any judgement and personal comments.

2. Research supporting the cognitive interview

   • Research has shown that people interviewed with the cognitive interview technique are much more accurate in their recall of events
     • Key study of the cognitive interview - Geiselman et al
       • Method - in staged situation and intruder carrying a blue rucksack entered a classroom and stole a slide projector. Two days later participants were questioned about the event. The study used independent groups design where participants were either questioned using standard interview procedure or cognitive interview techniques. Early in the questioning participants were asked " was the guy with the green backpack nervous?" Later in the interview participants were asked what colour the mans rucksack was.
         • Results - Participants in the cognitive interview were less likely to recall the rucksack as being green than those in the standard interveiw condition
           • It had high ecological validity , the experiment used an independent groups design. The disadvantage of this was that the cognitive interview condition could have been naturally less susceptible to leading questions than the other group.

3. Additional studies of cognitive interview

   • Fisher et al
     • They provided support for the usefulness of the cognitive interview.
       • Method- they trained american detectives to use cognitive interview technique. The detectives used the technique to interview witnesses to crimes
         • Using the technique increased the amount of information that the witness reported
   • Koehnken et at
     • Method - They compared witnessed questioned with the cognitive interview technique with witnessed questioned using the standard technique
       • Results - those questioned using the cognitive technique recalled more incorrect details than those with standard
         • Evaluation - this could be due to cognitive interview causing witness to recall more information in the first place therefore there is more opportunity to make mistakes