COGNITIVE INTERVIEWS

AC1.2 Assess the use of investigative techniques in criminal investigations

Criminal investigation

• Criminal investigation – an ensemble of methods by which crimes are studied and criminals apprehended

• The criminal investigator seeks to ascertain the methods, motives, and identities of criminals and the identity of victims and may also search for and interrogate witnesses.

AIM

• Improve the effectiveness of witness interviews

• Memory is not like a video camera

• Psychological research shows that memory is an active process

CI

• The cognitive interview (CI) is a method of interviewing eyewitnesses and victims about what they remember from a crime scene.

• Using four retrievals, the primary focus of the cognitive interview is to make witnesses and victims of a situation aware of all the events that transpired.

CI

• The cognitive interview is a technique used during police interviews and aims to elicit as much information as possible from the eye witness by using four components.

FOUR STAGESWHAT? WHY?

1 CONTEXTREINSTATEMENT

Recall the scene, the weather, what you were thinking and

feeling

Recalling how you felt and the context enhance recollection (these

details act as cues to recall)

2 REPORTEVERYTHING

Report every detail you can – even if it seems irrelevant or

trivial

Witnesses might not realise that some details are important and details might help them recall

significant information3 RECALL FROM A

CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

Describe the event as it would have been seen from different

viewpoints

Encourages many retrieval paths

4 RECALL IN REVERSE ORDER

Describe the even in reverse order

When events are recalled in forward order, witnesses reconstruct based

on their schemes. If the order is changed they are more accurate

Which stage?

• ‘Please do not edit anything out of your

report, even things you think may not be

important’

Which stage?

• ‘Think about how you were feeling at the time and think about your reactions to the

incident’

Which stage?

• ‘Try starting with the thing that had the biggest impression on you

regarding the incident and then go from there, going both forward in

time and backward’

Which stage?

• ‘Think about what the surrounding environment looked like at the

scene, such as rooms, the weather, any nearby people or objects’

Which stage?

• ‘Try to place yourself in the role of a prominent character

in the incident and think about what he or she must have seen

Research into The Cognitive Interview- Fisher et al

• tested the validity of the cognitive interview• They used a group of police officers and trained half of

them to use the cognitive interview (cognitive group) and let half of them use normal interviewing techniques (control group)

• Both groups carried out two different interviews with the same person. In the second interview, the cognitive group used the cognitive interviewIn the second interview the cognitive group obtained 47% more facts relating to the event whereas there was no increase in the control group

FISHER et al 1987

• ADDED A FEW MORE POINTS:

EVALUATIONSTRENGTHS WEAKNESSES

It is widely used by police forces sometimes with variations on the

original – this allows for a consistency in how witnesses are

interviewed, but also gives it relativity to develop with the

situation

It leads to extensive recall

Police personnel have to be trained and this can be expensive

and time consuming and most forces are facing funding cuts.

The information recalled by the witnesses take a long time to for the police to “sieve through”. The

technique is time consuming if it is to be used in its entirety. This is an

issue as obviously the longer it take the longer the perpetrator is

still out there.