Improving EWT: cognitive interview

Improving EWT: cognitive interview

1. 1.) Report everything: witness is encouraged to report every single detail of the event even if it seems irrelevant.

2. 2.) Reinstate the context: mentally reinstate the context of the event-recall the scene/weather/feelings at the time.

3. 3.) Reverse the order : events should be recalled in different chronological order to the original sequence - for example from end to beginning - done to prevent reporting expectations of what might have happened and to avoid dishonesty .

4. 4.) Change perspective: try to recall the event from others perspectives- done to disrupt expectations or schema

5. Enhanced Cognitive interview: no unncessary interruptions/ questions, the witness controls the flow of info,asking open ended questions, encourage them to speak slowly,reminding witness to say they dont know rather than guessing,reducing anxiety in witness.

6. Fisher and Giesselman

7. Postitive evaluation : some elements of CI are useful (combination of report everything and reinstate the context were highly effective-can improve police interviewing)--there is support for the effctiveness of ECI (meta anaysis by Kohnken found it got more correct info than a standard police interview-shows there are real practical benefits)

8. Negative Evaluation: CI is time consuming and takes specialist training so is often not used- produces an increase in inaccurate info as well as accurate (82% increase in accurate but 61% increase in innaccurate)