Holliday showed children aged 5 to 9 a video of a child’s birthday party and interviewed them the next day …show more content…
They were then interviewed with a CI or standard interview (SI). Replicating earlier research, there was a significant increase in the number of correct details reported when witnesses were interviewed using CI with no cost to accuracy.
Stein and Memon tested female cleaning staff in Brazil and found that the cognitive interview increased the amount of details remembered about a crime. The details remembered were often useful to the police including important details like a description of the criminal. This is further support for the effectiveness of the cognitive interview with a more representative sample of participants and suggests the cognitive interview is effective with ordinary people as well as students.
Many of the studies on the effectiveness of the cognitive interview are lab studies that used videos of crimes. The participants were often students. The findings may be valid for the experimental situation but may not generalise to real life interview