Cognitive Interview

Giesleman et al devloped the interview to gain more information from witnesses 

it was developed from using police interviews. there are four stages:

• report everything - the witnesses are encouraged to report every detail even if it seems unimportant to them 
• recreating the accident - they are encourage to return to the scene of the accident again to see if there is anything else that they remeber from it 
• changing the order - the timeline of events are changed to see if this helps the individual to remember any more information - for example they may start at the end of the event and work their way to the beginning 
• changing the perspective - the witness of the event is encouraged to change their point of view of the event to see if they remember any more details of it and so that they can gain extra infromation about it 

- compared the cognitive interivew with normal police interviews 

- showed students videos of police training involving violent crimes 

- two days later they were interviewed by a law enfrocer using either the cognitive interview or a standard police interview 

- people who were interviewed using the cognitive interview gave a higher number of correct answers than those who were interviewed using a police interview 

- did a meta-analysis of 27 studies 

- found in all of the cases the interview provided from cognitive interviews was a lot more accurate compared to the information collected from other forms of interview 

- used two groups of children - one group aged 4-5 and the other aged 9-10 

-they were shown a five minute video of a child's birthday 

- the next day the children were interviewed about what had happened using either the cognitive interview or a normal police interview 

- the results showed that those who had been interviewed in the cognitive interview condition had given a much higher amount of correct information