1. What is it? Research into the effectiveness of CI Evaluation
Cognitive Interview
What is it?
Research into the effectiveness of CI
Evaluation

2. What is Cognitive Interview?
A method of interviewing based on techniques to improve memory recall.
Aimed to reduce leading questions
To prevent frequent interruptions, which made it hard for the witness to concentrate fully on the process of retrieval, and thus reduced recall
Focus on ALL of the senses (previously under-emphasised)
Be more “witness-led”
Reduce the use of close-ended questions

3. Two principles from Psychology
Several retrieval paths so information not available in one technique could be available to another. Hence:
change the order
change the perspective.
Cue Dependent Theory
Remember more when context is same in retrieval and encoding
Recreate original context (i.e. what you were feeling at time, what you were doing etc…)

4. Main aspects. Report everything Recreate original context Change order
Change perspective
(Fisher and Geiselman, 1986)

5. Effectiveness Fischer and Geisleman (1986) There is research support
51 non-student participants watched films of violent crimes and were interviewed 48 hours later.
The cognitive interview elicited significantly more correct information from the subjects than did the standard police interview.
There is research support
Kohnken et al completed meta-analyis of 53 studies and found a 34% increase in correct recall when compared to standard interviewing techniques.

6. Evaluation
It is time consuming to train inexperienced staff and therefore costly.
Also time consuming to actually conduct - police in the field say that it takes too long. If they want information quickly, they are likely to use other techniques.
Can sometimes generate too much information.
Hard to evaluate as many versions of CI
Some forces use some or all of the stages/techniques and therefore it is difficult to control all the variables.
The effectiveness of the approach cannot conclusively support CI.