In this video we will explore how the psychological understanding of memory has
been applied to police interviews in an attempt to improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
To do that we need to discuss a particular type of interview,
one called the cognitive interview. So let's begin.
# Eye witness testimony: The standard interview So before I talk about the cognitive
interview in general let's consider the limitations of eyewitness testimony.
The previous video showed factors like anxiety, misleading information and post-event
contamination, so witnesses talking to each other can all influence the accuracy of recall.
In the late eighties a researcher called Fisher studied what was happening in real police stations
in Florida. The witness interview techniques he observed he termed the standard interview.
In the standard interview Fisher said the witnesses were bombarded with a lot of
closed direct questions. When the investigators asked questions they didn't ask in an order
that matched the witnesses own personal mental representation of the event and witnesses weren't
able to freely talk about their experience, they were frequently interrupted by the investigator.
Fisher and another researcher called Geiselman designed a range of techniques to fix these
problems and called this the cognitive interview. # Eye witness testimony: The cognitive interview
So far we know what the standard interview is. So what exactly is the cognitive interview? Well the
cognitive interview has four defining features. Firstly context reinstatement, this is asking
the witness to mentally return to the scene of the crime. So imagining the physical environment
as well as what mental and emotional state they were in. Now if you think back to the video on
explanations for forgetting you can see how this process should act as a cue to memory.
Secondly report everything, asking the witness to say every detail that they can remember,
even if the details seem to be irrelevant. Third to recall from a changed perspective.
This is to recall again, but mentally put yourself in the position of somebody else, this could be
another witness, the victim or even the criminal. This process is supposed to disrupt the witnesses
schema leading to testimony with less bias. And finally recall in reverse order. Now this
could literally recall the events backwards, but is really about changing the chronology,
so maybe starting from the middle or going from the middle backwards. Again this is likely to
disrupt schema by not allowing the witness to rely on what they expect to have happened.
So that was the cognitive interview, there is also an enhanced version,
this has a range of additional suggestions to help the witness feel more comfortable in the process
and help establish rapport between the interviewer and interviewee. Some of the
additional suggestions are allowing the witness to control the flow of information, using open ended
questions and not interrupting the witness. # Evaluating the cognitive interview
There is research we cans consider when evaluating the cognitive interview.
Fisher conducted field research to test his ideas.
16 detectives from a real police department took part, seven were trained in the use of
the cognitive interview and the remaining nine continued with the standard interview.
The results showed the cognitive interview trained detectives gained 47% more information
after their training, and 63% more than the detectives that continued with the standard
interview. Now this suggests that when it comes to improving the amount of eye witnesses
recall the cognitive interview is more effective than the standard interview. And we can point
to the fact this evidence has high validity as it comes from real detectives working on real cases.
Kohnken’s meta-analysis of 42 studies on the cognitive interview containing over
two thousand five hundred interviews provides partial support for the cognitive interview.
There was a significant increase in recalling accurate information
when using the cognitive interview compared to standard interviews. But
there was also a significant increase in the amount of incorrect information recalled.
So overall these results show a similar overall accuracy rate with the cognitive interview with
an 85% accuracy and the standard interview 82%. So this suggests that while the quantity
of information gained is more with the cognitive interview, if we are discussing the accuracy of
that information it doesn't seem to be any more accurate than the standard interview.
And a final study, Milne and Bull looked at each of the four aspects of the cognitive interview
to see which instruction may be increasing the quantity of information recalled. They found
no difference between each instruction, but they did see a significant increase in the combination
of context reinstatement and recall everything. This suggests the increased information we get
from the cognitive interview may come from the combined effects of all the factors together.
# Additional evaluations
Well as you can imagine the cognitive interview takes time.
And in the real world detectives have limited time available to them, they are working on other cases
and perhaps the case itself requires information quickly. In addition to this police being able
to conduct the cognitive interview requires them to be trained, this is time that the
officers could be spending on other cases. Both of these factors cost money, and a police force
may simply not have the financial resources available to use the cognitive interview.
But we could consider this from the perspective of a cost benefit analysis, when thinking about
the overall cost to the economy the cognitive interview may be worth the additional resources.
It would lead to a police force more able to combat crime and reduce crime's effect on society.
Another weakness is the cognitive interview is not effective in identity parades and
identifying suspects from photographs, these are one of the main uses of eyewitness testimony
and limits the effectiveness of the cognitive interview.
The normal cognitive interview while effective on older children and adults
is not effective with younger children. However there is a modified cognitive
interview developed by Holliday that was shown to be effective for four to five year
olds. This modified version is better adapted to their developmental level.
have a go at this a real exam question on the cognitive interview.
if you are a psych boost patron at the neuron level and above you can access a
tutorial on psych boost .com. in it I will talk you through a model answer for this question
and general tips.for everyone else don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the
videos released right up to your exams, and I will see you in the next psych boost video.