Cognitive interview techniques
Cognitive interview techniques are specialized interviewing protocols rooted in cognitive psychology, designed to enhance the accuracy and quantity of information obtained from eyewitnesses. Given the critical role eyewitness evidence plays in criminal investigations, these techniques aim to mitigate common pitfalls associated with traditional interviewing methods, which often lead to incomplete or inaccurate testimonies. Developed by psychologists Ronald P. Fisher and R. Edward Geiselman in the 1980s, the cognitive interview focuses on three main areas: the social dynamics between the interviewer and the witness, the cognitive processes involved in memory recall, and the communication strategies used during the interview.
By fostering a supportive environment and encouraging witnesses to share detailed narratives through open-ended questions, interviewers can obtain more reliable accounts. The cognitive interview also employs strategies to help witnesses access stored memories more effectively, such as recreating the original context of the event. Research indicates that these techniques can yield significantly more accurate information compared to conventional methods, making them particularly useful in serious crime and accident investigations. While cognitive interview techniques are increasingly adopted by larger investigative agencies and in various countries, their implementation remains inconsistent across different law enforcement bodies. Overall, cognitive interviews represent a scientifically backed approach to improve eyewitness testimony, ultimately aiming to enhance the effectiveness of police investigations.
Cognitive interview techniques
DEFINITION: Interviewing protocols based on the science of cognitive psychology
SIGNIFICANCE: Because eyewitness evidence is critical to solving many crimes, it is important that law-enforcement personnel employ interviewing techniques that elicit extensive and accurate information from witnesses. The use of cognitive interview techniques can maximize the effectiveness of witness interviews.
Evidence collected from cooperative witnesses is critical for solving many crimes and for determining what happened at accident scenes. Nevertheless, many and accident investigators receive only minimal or no training in techniques to use when interviewing cooperative witnesses. Often the only training they get comes from on-the-job experience or from watching more senior investigators conduct interviews—whether well or poorly. Police and other investigative interviewers therefore often make avoidable errors and collect less information than is potentially available. Even worse, through poor questioning techniques, interviewers may entice witnesses to recall or describe critical events incorrectly.
The most common interviewing mistakes include asking suggestive or leading questions, asking too many short-answer questions and too few open-ended questions, interrupting witnesses during their answers, and asking questions that are unrelated to the witness’s thoughts and mental images. To remedy this problem, two research psychologists, Ronald P. Fisher and R. Edward Geiselman, began work during the 1980s to develop an improved interviewing technique, the cognitive interview (CI), to increase the amount of accurate information collected from cooperative witnesses. CI techniques incorporate the theoretical principles of cognitive and social psychology and borrow elements and techniques from other investigative domains, including journalism, medicine, and social work. Part of the training in CI techniques involves the modeling of the differences between effective and ineffective police interviewers.
Principles of the Cognitive Interview
Cognitive interview techniques were developed to improve three psychological processes: the social dynamics between the witness and the interviewer, the thought processes of both the witness and the interviewer, and the communication between the witness and the interviewer. Interviewers can create more favorable social dynamics for interviews by developing personal rapport with respondents. This is especially true when they are interviewing victims and suspects. Interviewers should also instruct witnesses to take an active role within the interview and not merely answer questions with brief responses. Interviewers can accomplish this by instructing witnesses to generate detailed narrative descriptions without waiting for more questions, by asking mainly open-ended questions, and by not interrupting witnesses during their narrative responses.
Witnesses sometimes cannot recall critical details even though they have the information stored in their memories. Interviewers can help witnesses search through their memories more efficiently by instructing them to recreate the context of the original event (asking, for example, What were you thinking about at the time?), to search through their memories repeatedly, and to use all of their senses. Interviewers also make cognitive errors, as they have to do many mental tasks at the same time, including listening to and notating the witness’s answers, formulating hypotheses about the critical event, and asking questions. Interviewers can improve their own thought processes by encouraging witnesses to generate information without waiting for questions and by developing more efficient methods to record witnesses’ answers.
Interviewers often fail to communicate to witnesses their investigative needs for detailed and extensive information. As a result, witnesses do not report all of their available knowledge. Interviewers should inform witnesses explicitly that they need to provide detailed and informative answers. In addition, interviewers should understand that witnesses may have much information that is stored nonverbally (for example, a mental picture of the crime scene) and should facilitate witnesses’ communicating such information by encouraging nonverbal responses (such as making a sketch).
The sequence of the cognitive interview is based on two principles. First, the interviewer should try to develop a general understanding of the witness’s cognitive map of the event—that is, how the witness mentally represents the event—and then ask questions that are compatible with the witness’s cognitive map. Second, questioning should generally proceed in a funnel-like fashion, from more global, open-ended questions to more specific, closed-ended questions.
The cognitive interview is not a set of specific questions that are posed in the same fashion to all witnesses. Rather, CI techniques comprise a collection of many tools that should be used flexibly, depending on the specific factors of the case, such as the amount of time that has passed since the event and the witness’s state of anxiety and verbal skills.
Scientific Testing of the Cognitive Interview
CI techniques have been tested repeatedly in laboratory and field studies. In a typical laboratory study, volunteer witnesses—often college students—see a videotape of a simulated crime or accident or a live, innocuous event. Shortly thereafter, each witness is interviewed by someone trained to use CI techniques or by someone using a more conventional technique (as in, for example, a typical police interview). Researchers have introduced many variations in the basic laboratory study by testing different types of witnesses (children, elderly, learning disabled, autistic), types of events (crimes, vehicular and industrial accidents, medical procedures), and time intervals (immediately after the event, hours later, weeks later, and up to thirty-five years later). Two field studies have also been conducted with victims and witnesses of real crimes.
Approximately one hundred such validation studies have been conducted in the United States, England, Germany, Spain, Australia, and elsewhere. Generally, CI techniques have been found to elicit between 25 percent and 75 percent more correct statements than the conventional technique and at comparable or slightly higher accuracy rates.
Researchers indicated in 2024 that cognitive interviewing is useful when developing pragmatic measures but found it underused in implementation research, where measures are designed and used for a single study. However, in their case studies, they found it beneficial in implementation research. For example, they considered it helpful in the creation of opioid addiction treatment programs.
Practical and Legal Concerns
CI techniques are taught and used in some police departments and investigative agencies, but such techniques are not employed universally. Within the United States, CI techniques are more likely to be taught at major investigative agencies (such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Transportation Safety Board) than at smaller police departments. Internationally, CI techniques are taught and used extensively in England, Australia, Canada, Sweden, and Israel, but less so in other countries. More time is required to conduct a cognitive interview than a conventional police interview, so CI techniques are most likely to be used in relation to major crimes and accident investigations and by follow-up detectives (rather than first responders).
Although CI techniques were developed for interviews with cooperative witnesses, some component techniques are also valuable for interviewing suspects (such as establishing rapport and reporting events in different orders). The cognitive interview has been credited with generating extensive witness information to solve several high-profile cases, ranging from to terrorist bombings and accidents at sea.
CI techniques have been challenged unsuccessfully in a few court cases. In England, an appeals court overturned an earlier decision on the basis of information obtained with CI techniques. Although the court did not explicitly mention the cognitive interview in its ruling, the ultimate decision was consistent with the information elicited by the interview. In a California case, the used that had been elicited by a police officer trained in CI techniques. The defense attorney claimed that the cognitive interview was similar to hypnosis and that it promoted inaccurate eyewitness testimony. The judge, however, ruled against the defense’s argument and allowed the CI-elicited to stand. A Nebraska court evaluated CI techniques for their reliability according to the (a standard set by the US Supreme Court concerning expert witness testimony) and found that these techniques met the standards of scientific testing, peer review and publication, known (and acceptably low) error rates, and general acceptance.
Bibliography
Bull, Ray, editor. Investigative Interviewing. Springer, 2014.
Fisher, Ronald P., and R. Edward Geiselman. Memory-Enhancing Techniques in Investigative Interviewing: The Cognitive Interview. Charles C Thomas, 1992.
Fisher, Ronald P., R. Edward Geiselman, and Michael Amador. “Field Test of the Cognitive Interview: Enhancing the Recollection of Actual Victims and Witnesses of Crime.” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 74, 1989, pp. 722–27.
Kebbell, Mark R., and Graham F. Wagstaff. “Hypnotic Interviewing: The Best Way to Interview Eyewitnesses?” Behavioral Sciences and the Law, vol. 16, 1998, pp. 115–129.
Köhnken, Günter, Rebecca Milne, Amina Memon, and Ray Bull. “The Cognitive Interview: Meta-Analysis.” Psychology, Crime, and Law, vol. 5, 1999, pp. 3–27.
McLeod, Saul. "Cognitive Interview Technique." Simply Psychology, 15 June 2023, www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-interview.html. Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.
Patel-Syed, Zabin, et al. "What Do You Think It Means? Using Cognitive Interviewing to Improve Measurement in Implementation Science: Description and Case Example." Implementation Science Communications, vol. 5, no. 14, 14 Feb. 2024, doi.org/10.1186/s43058-024-00549-0. Accessed 18 Aug. 2024.