Cognitive Interview

Cognitive Interview

1. Report everything

   • The interviewee is asked to report everything that they can remember even if it seems unimportant
     • Every detail that is spoken may help the police or whoever is interviewing as well as make other details remembered

2. Mental reinstatment

   • Interviewee is asked to mentally recreate the environment of the event
     • Details of the environment can help to identify the criminal

3. Changing the order

   • Interviewee is asked to report the event in reverse order.
     • This makes the memory go against the "scripts" (the way we expect something to happen) and makes information be retrieved from different "routes" which can allow for more details and memories to be remembered
     • helps find out liars beacuse lies are told chronologically

4. Changing persepective

   • The interviewee is asked to imagine the event from a bystander or another victims perspective
     • Someone elses perspective may allow for more details of the environment and the criminal can be rememberd since like reversing the order, information is retrieved through different routes.

5. Supporting evidence

   • Milne and Bull (2002)
     • They found that a combination of the parts of the CI showed that recall was significantly higher than interviews with only 1 part used.
   • Kohnken et al. (19990
     • A 53 study meta-analysis found that Ci interviews showed ma 34% increase in correct information recalled compared to standard interview techniques

6. Limitations

   • This kind of interview takes longer than other deliberate strategies which are only used to get the minimal amount of information from a victim
   • Effectiveness is hard to measure since different police use different components and mehtods