Cognitive Interview

Cognitive Interview

1. The 4 stages

   • Mental reinstatement of original context
     • The interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate both the physical and psychological environment of the original incident
       • EXAMPLE: the interviewer may say 'how did you feel at that time?'
   • Report everything
     • The interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything out, even though it may seem irrelevant.
       • EXAMPLE: the interviewer may say 'please do not leave anything out'.
   • Change order
     • The interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident by reversing the order in which events occurred.
       • EXAMPLE: the interviewer may ask 'what happened before that?'
   • Change perspective
     • The interviewee is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives.
       • This is done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall.
       • EXAMPLE: trying to recall the incident from a perspective of another person

2. Evaluation

   • Research into the effectiveness of the cognitive interview
     • Meta-analysis found an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information in the CI compared with the standard interviewing techniques. The effectiveness of CI could be due to individual elements.
   • Quantity versus quality
     • It's designed to enhance the quantity if correct recall with out compromising the quality. Kognken found 81% increase of correct information but 61% increase of incorrect information when the enhanced CI was compared to a standard interview.
   • Problems with using the CI in pratice
     • Kebbell and Wagstaff found a problem with CI . It requires more time, they prefer to use deliberate strategies aimed to limit an eyewitness' report to the minimum amount of information that the offences feel is necessary.