Cognitive Interview Technique
Cognitive Interview Technique
Findings concerning the unreliability of eye-witness accounts have led researchers to attempt to devise methods for improving retrieval. One of these methods is the cognitive interview (proposed by Fisher and Geiselman, 1992).
The Cognitive Interview technique is a questioning technique used by the police to enhance retrieval of information from the witness’s memory.
The cognitive interview involves a number of techniques:
- The interviewer tries to mentally reinstate the environmental and personal context of the crime for the witnesses, perhaps by asking them about their general activities and feelings on the day. This could include sights, sounds, feelings and emotions, the weather etc..
- Witnesses are asked to report the incident from different perspective, describing what they think other witnesses (or even the criminals themselves) might have seen.
- Recounting the incident in a different narrative order. Geiselman & Fisher proposed that due to the recency effect, people tend to recall more recent events more clearly than others. Witnesses should be encouraged to work backwards from the end to the beginning.
- Witnesses are asked to report every detail, even if they think that detail is trivial. In this way, apparently unimportant detail might act as a trigger for key information about the event.
It is believed that the change of narrative order and change of perceptive techniques aid recall because they reduce witness’ use of prior knowledge, expectations or schema.
