School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemThe theory and practice of the cognitive interview in criminal cases( 2009)The cognitive interview is a technique utilised by police to enhance witnesses’ memories of criminal investigations. Fisher and Geiselman developed this technique in 1984 to provide officers with cognitive and social skills that would enhance witnesses’ memory performance. In the past, interviewing training of the police was minimal and largely focused on the “who, what, where, when, why and how” traditional questions. This technique failed to include strategies that enhanced witnesses’ memories of events. Victoria Police introduced the cognitive interview in 2000. While there is much research on the effectiveness of cognitive interviewing strategies, there have been relatively few studies that have examined officers’ own perspectives of the adoption and use of this technique (Kebbell, Milne & Wagstaff, 1999). The present research examined officers’ perceptions of their use of this technique by considering their current interview practices, situational use of components, issues related to the technique’s effectiveness and the use of technique components by officers trained and untrained as cognitive interviewers. Officers’ use of cognitive interview components during criminal investigations was also examined. A key research question was whether greater use of cognitive components resulted in increased witness memories (action and descriptive details) of crimes. Further, by examining whether this technique works by giving witnesses the opportunity to continue to generate material over a longer period and thus increase total recall or whether it works by making interviewing more productive (increasing the rate of recall), thus witnesses generate more details in a given period, it could be determined how the cognitive interview and its components work in relation to the memory retrieval process. The number of components officers’ used in relation to witnesses’ recall during interviews, together with the influences of contextual variables – crime complexity and witness involvement were examined. The research comprised two studies. Fifty officers (25 trained and an equal number untrained as cognitive interviewers) were interviewed about their interview practices and the use of the cognitive interview and its components. In the case file study of criminal investigations, the statements of 100 witnesses who observed armed robberies were assessed with respect to their memories of crime details (action and descriptive), crime complexity, and the type of coping strategies used by witnesses during crimes. The consistency of witness accounts was measured by comparing the accounts of two witnesses to each crime and where possible utilising police and court reports. Fifty witness accounts provided the data source. Officers who conducted these interviews were contacted and confirmed the type of interview and the number of interview components they used in these investigations. The interview study showed no significant difference in the frequency of use of cognitive components between trained and untrained officers except for the component pausing/timing questions. All cognitive components were well used except for change perspective. Although most cognitive interview components were considered by officers to be effective there were many situations where either some components were not used or they were considered impractical to use. The length of time it took to conduct a cognitive interview was also a major barrier to the use of this technique. The case file study results showed increasing use of cognitive components was associated with enhanced witnesses’ recall, and this was a monotonic relationship. There were many significant differences across the different component groups in relation to the number of words in witness statements, indicating that witnesses continued to generate new information over a longer time span (the length of their interview) and this explained how the cognitive interview worked, rather than the rate of details they were able to generate over a given time span. In relation to contextual variables, there were significant differences in recall between the crime complexity measures and between witnesses who used internal and external coping strategies during crimes. Regression tests found a strong relationship between the number of cognitive interview components used and the number of details recalled by witnesses. This relationship was found for descriptive and action details and across the case files witnesses recalled twice as many descriptive details than action details. However, there was no significant relationship for either crime complexity or coping strategies. The internal consistency of the results for the interview and case file studies shows that the findings are robust. Points of commonality between these findings and findings from studies of actual events, actual events in experimental settings and laboratory and methodological problems are considered. Findings in legal contexts and future research are also discussed.