The Cognitive interview

The Cognitive interview

1. Report everything- interviewer encourages reporting of every single detail of the event event bough it may seem irrelvant

2. Mental reinstatement of original context- interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate the environment & contacts from the original incident

3. Changing the order- interviewer may try alternative was through the timeline of the incident e.g. Reversing the order in which events occurred

4. Changing the perspective- interviewee asked to recall incident from multiple perspectives e.g how it would have appeared to other witnesses present at the time

5. Evaluation

   • Köhnken et al (1999) meta analysis of 53 studies- an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the CI compared with standard interviewing techniques.- HOWEVER most of the studies tested volunteer witnesses (usually college students) in the laboratory - difficult to generalise results to wider population
   • Kebbell & Wagstaff - technique requires more time than is often available
   • Kebbell & Wagstaff (1996) problem with evaluating the effectiveness of CI is that it is no longer just one 'procedure' - some police forces use the exact technique described by Fisher & Geiselman whilst others have tended to use only the 'reinstate context & 'report everything' components of CI
   • Milne & Bull (2002) undergraduate students & children interviewed using just one individual component of the CI, compared it to a control condition- recall across each of the 4 components was broadly similar & no different to that of the control group - HOWEVER when participants were interviewed using combination of the 'report everything' & 'mental reinstatement' compon
   • Mello & Fisher (1996) compared older and young adult's memory of a filmed simulated crime using CI or standard police interview- CI produced more information than the standard interview (advantage greater for the older participants) difficult to generalise as only male participants used (gender bias)
   • Stein & Memon (2006) women recruited from cleaning staff at large uni required to watch video of an abduction - CI increased the amount of correct information obtained from witness in comparison to standard police interviewing + superior in producing forensically rich info