Evaluate the use of cognitive interviews to
improve the validity of eyewitness testimony
(16 marks)
A01
Cognitive interview
● A method of questioning eyewitnesses to help them
recover more information
● It uses four main strategies, all based on the
psychological principles of human memory.
Technique 1: Report everything
● Witnesses are prompted to report every detail of the
event, even if they think the information is silly.
● Trivial details may be critical later on and can trigger
other prominent recollections.
Technique 2: Restore the context
● Witnesses should revert to the crime scene in their
brains and imagine the environment, e.g. weather, what
they could see, and how they felt.
● Related to context-dependent forgetting - reliable recall
is 40% lower in non-matching conditions (Godden and
Baddeley, 1975)
Technique 3: Reverse the order
● Recall events from a different historical order, e.g. from
the final point to the beginning.
● Reduces people recalling expectations of what occurred
rather than what happened
● Prevents fraud - it is harder to recall a false account if
the order is reversed.
Technique 4: Change perspective
● Witnesses recall the experiences from someone else's
perspective.
improve the validity of eyewitness testimony
(16 marks)
A01
Cognitive interview
● A method of questioning eyewitnesses to help them
recover more information
● It uses four main strategies, all based on the
psychological principles of human memory.
Technique 1: Report everything
● Witnesses are prompted to report every detail of the
event, even if they think the information is silly.
● Trivial details may be critical later on and can trigger
other prominent recollections.
Technique 2: Restore the context
● Witnesses should revert to the crime scene in their
brains and imagine the environment, e.g. weather, what
they could see, and how they felt.
● Related to context-dependent forgetting - reliable recall
is 40% lower in non-matching conditions (Godden and
Baddeley, 1975)
Technique 3: Reverse the order
● Recall events from a different historical order, e.g. from
the final point to the beginning.
● Reduces people recalling expectations of what occurred
rather than what happened
● Prevents fraud - it is harder to recall a false account if
the order is reversed.
Technique 4: Change perspective
● Witnesses recall the experiences from someone else's
perspective.
