The Cognitive Interview

Front 1

What is the cognitive interview?

Back 1

a technique used by police to interview witnesses of a crime, which encourages them to recreate the original context in order to increase the accessibility of stored information.

Front 2

What are the 2 principles which it is based on?

Back 2

1. there are several retrieval paths to each memory and if it is not accessible through one technique, another technique could retrieve the information.

2. Encoding specificity principle - if we can recreate the internal and external state of when we first encoded the information, it can be recalled more easily.

Front 3

What is technique number 1?

Back 3

Context reinstatement - mentally reinstating the context (e.g. recall environmental factors). This improves recall because it provides retrieval cues.

Front 4

What is technique number 2?

Back 4

Report everything - report every single detail even if they think it is irrelevant; what may seem irrelevant to them may be important. This improves recall because irrelevant details may serve as a retrieval cue for more relevant details.

Front 5

What is technique number 3?

Back 5

Changing the perspective - recall the incident from another person's perspective (e.g. another witness or the perpetrator). this improves recall because memories can be retrieved through a number of different paths, so it is better to try to vary the access routes.

Front 6

What is technique number 4?

Back 6

Reverse the order - alternative ways through the timeline, other than chronologically. This improves recall because it attempts to access information through a number of different routes. Also, memory research has suggested a recency effect.

Front 7

Gieselman et al

Back 7

48 hours after watching a violent crime video, participants were interviewed by a police man, either using a standard interview, the CI or hypnosis. The average number of correctly recalled facts were - 41.2 for CI, 38.0 for hypnosis and 29.4 for standard interview.

Front 8

Milne and Bull

Back 8

All four techniques used singularly produced more recall than standard interview techniques.

Front 9

Gieselman

Back 9

reviewed studies and found that children under the age of 6 reported less accurately in response to cognitive interview techniques, possibly because the instructions are hard to understand.

Front 10

What are the ethical issues? How can they be resolved?

Back 10

The cognitive interview asks participants to relive often traumatic experiences which may lead to lack of protection for harm. To solve this, give the witness breaks and inform them that they can stop if they become too distressed or uncomfortable.