Researchers have been attempting to design ways for boosting retrieval after discovering the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimonies. Cognitive interviewing is one of these strategies.
The cognitive interview (CI) is a questioning method used by cops to improve the recovery of information from eyewitnesses and victims’ memories concerning a crime scene.
As a replacement for the Standard Interview, Geiselman et al. (1985) created the Cognitive Interview. It contains four steps that are meant to excite as many signals as possible in order to maximize diverse retrieval pathways, and it takes into consideration psychological studies concerning cue-dependent forgetting.
- The first stage is to re-establish the context.
- Stage 2: Recall the events backward.
- Stage 3: Write down whatever they recall.
- Stage 4: Describe events from the perspective of someone else.
Our memories may be accessed in a variety of ways because they are made up of a network of associations rather than distinct and disconnected events. Multiple retrieval mechanisms are used in the cognitive interview to take advantage of this.
Changes in narrative sequence and perceptual approaches are thought to assist recall by reducing the use of prior information, expectancies, or schema by witnesses.
Geiselman, Fisher, MacKinnon, and Holland (1985) compared the cognitive interview to regular police interrogation and hypnosis in a psychology lab experiment.
