Outline and Evaluate the Cognitive Interview

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The Cognitive interview is a procedure designed for use in police interviews that involve witnesses. There were 2 main forces behind the development of the CI. The first one was the need to improve the effectiveness of police interviewers when questioning witnesses. The second was to apply the findings of psychological research to this area. Fisher and Geiselman developed an interview technique which was based on proven psychological principles conceiving effective memory recall. The original CI could be characterised by four distinct components. The first one is REPORT EVERYTHING which means that the interviewer encourages the witness to report all the details about the event even if they feel some details are unimportant or irrelevant. The second technique is MENTAL REINSTATEMENT OF ORIGINAL CONTEXT which means that the interviewer encourages the witness to mentally recreate an image of the incident, including details of the environment, e.g. weather and their feelings at the time of the incident. There could be a problem with this as it may increase witness anxiety and therefore information may be less accurate. The third technique is CHANGING THE ORDER where the witness is asked to recall the incident in a different chronological order. The last one is CHANGING THE PERSPECTIVE where the witness is asked to mentally recreate the situation from different points of view e.g describing what another witness at that time would have seen. A meta-analysis of 53 studies found on average an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the Cognitive Interview compared with standard interviewing techniques. However most of these witnesses test volunteer students (usually college students) in the lab. One criticism of this study is that it lacks ecological validity because it does not represent real life
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