Cognitive Psychology assessment 4,
Outline and evaluate the use of cognitive interview opposed to the normal interview
Findings concerning the unreliability of eye-witness accounts have led researchers to attempt to devise methods for improving retrieval. One of these methods is the cognitive interview. Cognitive interview was created by Fisher and Geiselman (1992).The Cognitive Interview technique is a questioning technique used by the police to enhance retrieval of information from the witnesses’ memory.
The cognitive interview involves the encouragement of eyewitnesses’ to do four basic things when being interviewed. The first thing that the cognitive interview expects is for the EW to report every detail, regardless of how trivial it may seem. Secondly the cognitive interview expects every EW to recreate the context of the event with the witness encouraged to mentally recreate the environment or contacts they may have had. The EW will also be expected to recall the event in different orders such as in reverse order or at different stages. The last basic expectation from the EW Is to recall the event from different points of view or perspectives of what others may have been. These aspects of the cognitive interview were introduced because Geiselman et al realised the importance of recalled every detail, big or small. This is why he proposed looking at an event from different prospective, his thought process behind this was that people may recall more details if they take different routes to the memory. Geiselman (1992) based his research statistics of the accuracy of the EW’s statements with and without the cognitive interview. Geiselman found that when using the cognitive interview the number of correct statements produced was 41.1% compared to 29.4% when the cognitive interview wasn’t used.
Kohnken et al’s meta-analysis of 53 studies found the cognitive interview increased recall on average by 34%when compared to the standard interview methods. This study has the capability to relate to everyday life where the police can use this to show more information from witnesses that may prove crucial to solves crimes. But this study does have a criticism, the Meta analysis consisted of college students and within a laboratory setting. This study also lacks population validity ass it expects a group of college students to be representative of wide age ranges (therefore may only show effectiveness of the cognitive interview on one age group). Also with student participant’s age could be a confounding variable as research in other studies has found memory recall to be affected by age. The study may also lack internal validity as it may not actually be measuring the effectiveness off the cognitive interview compared to the standard interview. Instead this study might be investigating how one interview technique affects a certain age range of people. The laboratory settings lack ecological validity too as although they may help in replicating the study to test for reliability as well as controls to establish the cause and effect, the setting itself lacks mundane realism due to its artificial set up. Fisher et al found supporting evidence for the cognitive interview. He used a real life situation which involved 2 groups of police officers (one group cognitive interview trained and one group of officers just using the standard interview), 47 victims got interviewed twice (standard and cognitive interview techniques). The results found that the cognitive gained 47% more facts compared to the standard interview, overall it was found that the cognitive interview is beneficial for improving EWT. This study have high external validity as they used real police officers and victims. But one weakness to this study is that the group of officers who didn’t get trained in the cognitive interview may feel demotivated due to the fact they didn’t get the opportunity to be trained, this could mean that the standard interview had a slight disadvantage from the start.
The cognitive interview is clearly effective at increasing the amount of information that is recalled but there are three vital limitations. The first one being that there is a concern over the increase in amount of incorrect information provided by EW’s when the cognitive interview is used. Secondly the cognitive interview is generally less effective at enhancing recall when used at longer internal of time after crime or incident, therefore they would need to be interviews as soon as possible after the crime. Thirdly the cognitive interview contains several components, therefore it is not clear whether contribute to success of the techniques.
Overall the cognitive interview may prove useful in the interviewing of more senior witnesses. They tend to be more wary in giving details due to the perception their memory declines but the cognitive interview promotes people to describe every detail which may help overcome this. Fisher et al found the cognitive interview produced more information than the standard interview but this was much greater for older participants than a younger control group. The highlights how the cognitive interview may help overcome individual differences and age barriers for older participants.