Cognitive interview
Using four retrievals, the primary focus of the cognitive interview is to make witnesses and victims of a situation aware of all the events that transpired.
Cognitive interviews are increasingly used in police investigations, and training programs and manuals have been created.
[1] However, it has been found that many eyewitness reports were unreliable as they could be incomplete, partially constructed and vulnerable to suggestions during the interviewing process.
[2][3] Many of the techniques were explored by Elizabeth Loftus, a researcher who studied eyewitness testimony, the misinformation effect, and false memories.
[4] In 1985 Geiselman, Fisher and their colleagues MacKinnon and Holland further showed that the cognitive interview had ecological validity by having participants watch videos of simulated violent crimes.
The revised version of the cognitive interview showed an increase of 45 percent in correct information retrieved.
[6] In 1992, Fisher and Geiselman wrote a training manual for investigative services on how to conduct a cognitive interview.
[citation needed] The foundation for the creation of the cognitive interview was rooted in several well researched facts about human memory.
Past research has demonstrated that memories that have been encoded during a high, emotionally aroused state may be accessible only if the same affect is reinstated during retrieval.
The use of the cognitive interview is based on four memory retrieval rules[5] and several supplementary techniques.
The enhanced CI includes more social aspects to the interview setting and procedure, which adds a further increase in recall from the original version.
[8] The enhanced version also includes several general principles for improving communication between the interviewer and the participant.
[8] These recommendations include minimizing any distractions, allowing for a pause between the response and the next question, as well as tailoring the language used to suit the eyewitness.
[14] In a study done by Fisher, Geiselman, and Amador several suggestions are provided for the interviewer to use when they feel appropriate in order to maximize memory retrieval.
If there are no eyewitnesses or bystanders present during a crime, the use in performing a cognitive interview becomes limited to non-existent.
[7][14] Research has also demonstrated that cognitive interviews are not generally effective as a form of memory-enhancement with regards to the recognition of suspects in police lineups or photo arrays.
This means that the witness alters their story or response in a way that they feel makes their answer more acceptable in the eyes of the interviewer as well as society.
[19] Despite the fact that cognitive interviewing methods have been modified for use with children, these modifications are not equally effective across all pre-adolescent age groups.
Studies have shown that younger children have more difficulty adhering to the more advanced components of the cognitive interview.
[20] Another advantage of the cognitive interview aside from its success in enhanced recall is that it can be learned and applied with a minimal amount of training.
Field tests have shown that police officers trained in cognitive interviewing benefit from gathering more information from witnesses in investigative scenes.
[22] The children demonstrate correct recall of the criminal, the crime, as well as objects and location in comparison to a controlled police interview.
[20] Another study sought out to compare the effectiveness of three interview procedures for optimizing witness memory performance.
[20] These benefits in more correct details seen in older adult witnesses are reliable with the environmental support hypothesis, which predicts that older adults rely more on and make more effective use of, external support at the time of remembering due to reduced cognitive resources that are needed to initiate their own retrieval strategies.
