Cognitive Interview - History

History

In 1975, the RAND Corporation completed a study on criminal-investigations. The study found that the testimony of an eyewitness was an important determinant in whether the case was solved or not. However, it has been found that many eyewitness reports were unreliable as they could be incomplete, partially constructed and vulnerable to suggestions during the interviewing process. Studies have shown that interviewing techniques such as asking leading questions and closed-ended questions can influence the responses given by the interviewee. Many of the techniques were explored by Elizabeth Loftus, a researcher who studied eyewitness testimony, the misinformation effect, and false memories.

Cognitive interviews were developed in 1984 by researchers Geiselman, Fisher and their colleagues in response to the ineffective police interviewing techniques used in the past. Their goal was to suggest methods that increased the accuracies of eyewitness testimony. They found that when participants were trained in memory retrieval techniques, the participants recalled more correct information about an event that occurred on a questionnaire. They based the techniques on four general memory retrieval rules based on the encoding specificity principle, and the assumption that memory traces are usually complex with various kinds of information. In 1985 Geiselman, Fisher and their colleagues MacKinnon and Holland further showed that the cognitive interview had ecological validity by having participants watch videos of simulated violent crimes. The original concept of the cognitive interview was revised in 1987 by Fisher, Geiselman and their colleagues. The revisions to the original cognitive interview incorporated the idea of structuring the interview to be more compatible with how the brain retrieves memories. The revised version of the cognitive interview showed an increase of 45 percent in correct information retrieved. In 1992, Fisher and Geiselman wrote a training manual for investigative services on how conduct a cognitive interview. The techniques they developed are widely used today by a variety of investigative services such as police departments, private investigators, and attorneys.