Cognitive Interview

The cognitive interview was developed by Geiselmen et al. It is a interview stragegy that police officers can now use to improve witnesses recall of a certain event.

1.) Re-create the incident, such as making a mental image of the situation and it's surroundings like weather and lighting.

2.) Report every detial that they can remember.

3.) Recall the events in different orders.

4.) Recall the event through other peoples perspectives, so how other people could of seen the situation.

It was developed by Geislmen et al. In a study they did they had 89 students.

So each student saw a tape of violent crimes and then 48 hours later were interviewed about the tape. The police officers were spilt into to gorups, one group was trained in normal police interview stragery and the other half were trained in the cognitve interview stragery. The findings were that the particiapnts who were interviewed through the cognitive interview stragery remeber 41.5 correct items whereas the normal interview stragery only 29.5 correct itmes were remebered.

Concluding that the cognitive interview stragery has a higher rate of recalling events from people's memory's in a correct order. However the error rate in this study was quite similar.

Holliday found supporting evidence that the cognitive interview stragery is useful to question children with. They showed a range of children a video of a child's birthday party. Then the day afterward asked the children questions about the party through the cognitive interview style. Once again the children recalled more correct information through the cognitive interview than a standard interview.