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Cognitive Interview - Coggle Diagram
Cognitive Interview
Techniques
1. Context Reinstatement: Questions require witnesses to mentally recreate an image of the situation. Details of environment and emotional state.
2. Report Everything: These questions require the witness to report all details about the event , even though they may seem unimportant.
Works because recalling how you felt at the tome of the crime as well as what the environment was like provides more possible retrieval cues.
Works because they may not realise that some details are important and details may help them recall significant information because small details may act as retrieval cues.
3. Recall in reverse order: Questions require the witness to recall the scene in a different chronological order
Works because it prevents people from reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than actual events.
4. Recall from a changed perspective: Questions require the witnesses to mentally recreate the situation from different points of view.
Works because this is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting generate expectations of what would have happened and it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened.
Evaluations
(+) Research demonstrates the CI is effective - Gieselman: found that officers using the technique got on average 12 more items of correct information than those using standard police interviews.
(+) Research demonstrates the CI is effective - Fisher et al: Found that Miami Police Department detectives trained in CI, collected 63% more information than untrained officers using the standard interview.
(-) Not more effective - Memon (1994) : found that SI produced as many correct answers as the cognitive interview. A year earlier he found that CI questions may actually mislead questions.
(+) CI useful when interviewing older witnesses: negative stereotypes about older adults 'declining' memory can make such witnesses overly cautious when reporting information. Mellow and Fisher compared older (mean 72) and younger (mean 22) adults memory of a filmed stimulated crime using either a CI or SI. CI produced more information than the SI.
(-) Time Consuming: Kebbell and Wagstaff found many police officers did not use the CI in less serious crimes as they didn't have time. Often used strategies to deliberately limit an eyewitness report to the minimum amount of info deemed necessary.
(-) Difficult to see if the CI is effective in real life: Thames Valley Police do not use the 'changes perspectives component' - others tend to use 'reinstate context' and 'report everything'.
(-) Creates more inaccurate information: Kohnken et al found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information when the ECI was used compared to Standard Police Interview.
Schema: a mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing - mental blue print.
Cognitive Interview: A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories. They work because they reduce inaccuracies caused by leading questions and anxiety but also because the increase retrieval cues.
The interviewer also: 1. Avoids direct questions - avoids potential leading questions. 2. Avoids interruptions - increase anxiety. Both features of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview