Cognitive Interview 16 marks
The cognitive interview was proposed by Fisher and Geiselman as an alternative to the
standard police interview. They believed that the four stages of the cognitive interview
would improve the recall of witnesses. The first stage of the cognitive interview is the report
everything, this is where the police officer would ask the witnesses to state everything they
remember even if it seems insignificant. The next state is the reinstate the context where
the officer would ask the witness to describe the environment around them at the time of
the crime. These first two stages aim to provide context dependant cues that may further
aid the witness’s memory of the event. The third stage asks the witness to change the
perspective and the last stage asks the witness to reverse the order of the events. These last
two stages aim to disrupt the schema of the witness preventing bias and also enable the
officer to identify in the witness could be lying. Fisher then went on to develop the
enhanced cognitive interview which worked on building rapport between the interviewer
and the witnesses by using specific social interactions, such as eye contact.
One limitation of the cognitive interview is that although it increases the amount of correct
information it also increases the amount of incorrect information. This was shown by
Kohnken who found that the cognitive interview increased inaccurate information by 61%.
This shows that overall the standard interview may actually be more reliable decreasing the
applicability of the cognitive interview to actual events.
Additionally, the cognitive interview is time consuming and therefore could take away
valuable time of the police officer who could be progressing on case. However, although
using all four steps takes too much time Milne and Bull found that the most effective steps
were the report everything and reinstate the context. This means that even just
implementing the first two steps can lead to improvements making parts of the cognitive
interview very useful and in actuality not as time-consuming as first supposed.
A strength of the cognitive interview is that it helps encourage the older demographic to
give heir testimonies. Often the older generations feel that their memory may not be good
enough to give evidence or that they might have seen it wrong. The cognitive interview
helps make these less confident individuals feel like their testimony is important and helps
encourage them into believing that their memories are reliable. This shows that the
cognitive interview can have a positive impact on older communities by encouraging them
to also give their testimonies as witnesses.
Another limitation of the cognitive interview is that it is expensive to run. This is because
police officers have to be trained in how to carry it out which costs money to run
demonstrating that the cognitive interview may not be that useful. The cost-benefit analysis
of the cognitive interview may even suggest that this form of interview is not worth the
money to carry out given the inaccuracies it continues to produce.
The cognitive interview was proposed by Fisher and Geiselman as an alternative to the
standard police interview. They believed that the four stages of the cognitive interview
would improve the recall of witnesses. The first stage of the cognitive interview is the report
everything, this is where the police officer would ask the witnesses to state everything they
remember even if it seems insignificant. The next state is the reinstate the context where
the officer would ask the witness to describe the environment around them at the time of
the crime. These first two stages aim to provide context dependant cues that may further
aid the witness’s memory of the event. The third stage asks the witness to change the
perspective and the last stage asks the witness to reverse the order of the events. These last
two stages aim to disrupt the schema of the witness preventing bias and also enable the
officer to identify in the witness could be lying. Fisher then went on to develop the
enhanced cognitive interview which worked on building rapport between the interviewer
and the witnesses by using specific social interactions, such as eye contact.
One limitation of the cognitive interview is that although it increases the amount of correct
information it also increases the amount of incorrect information. This was shown by
Kohnken who found that the cognitive interview increased inaccurate information by 61%.
This shows that overall the standard interview may actually be more reliable decreasing the
applicability of the cognitive interview to actual events.
Additionally, the cognitive interview is time consuming and therefore could take away
valuable time of the police officer who could be progressing on case. However, although
using all four steps takes too much time Milne and Bull found that the most effective steps
were the report everything and reinstate the context. This means that even just
implementing the first two steps can lead to improvements making parts of the cognitive
interview very useful and in actuality not as time-consuming as first supposed.
A strength of the cognitive interview is that it helps encourage the older demographic to
give heir testimonies. Often the older generations feel that their memory may not be good
enough to give evidence or that they might have seen it wrong. The cognitive interview
helps make these less confident individuals feel like their testimony is important and helps
encourage them into believing that their memories are reliable. This shows that the
cognitive interview can have a positive impact on older communities by encouraging them
to also give their testimonies as witnesses.
Another limitation of the cognitive interview is that it is expensive to run. This is because
police officers have to be trained in how to carry it out which costs money to run
demonstrating that the cognitive interview may not be that useful. The cost-benefit analysis
of the cognitive interview may even suggest that this form of interview is not worth the
money to carry out given the inaccuracies it continues to produce.
