The cognitive interview: New procedures to enhance witnesses' statements and evaluate report accuracy

Crime witnesses’ reports can determine the success of a police investigation or forensic assessment (Fisher, 2010). However, witnesses’ reports rarely fully correspond with what happened or even with what witnesses memorized (Paulo, Albuquerque, & Bull, 2013). Among other social and communicative factors, many processes inherent to human memory can explain why errors and omissions are common in witnesses’ testimonies (Fisher & Geiselman, 2010). Nonetheless, using inappropriate interview techniques, sometimes common in police and forensic interviews, augments this problem often leading to poor testimonies (Milne & Bull, 1999). To obtain the best possible report from witnesses, Fisher and Geiselman (1992) developed an interview protocol drawn from theoretical principles and research concerning human memory for interviewing cooperative witnesses: the Enhanced Cognitive Interview. This interview protocol is now commonly referred to as the Cognitive Interview or CI and has been extensively studied, adapted and used by police forces in various countries (e.g. England and Wales), typically eliciting informative and accurate reports (Paulo et al., 2013). Nevertheless, research on witness interviewing or on the Cognitive Interview in Portugal is very limited. Cooperation among professionals (e.g., police and research teams) is also very rare in Portugal and disclosure or evaluation of police interview protocols is seldom conducted (Paulo, Albuquerque, & Bull, 2014). This first article included in this thesis critically addresses these aspects while also thoroughly describing the Cognitive Interview, theoretical assumptions that justify its use, and summarizing some of the prior research on this subject. Thus, the first article presented in this thesis is a brief literature review to acquaint the reader with some of the research on this subject, address the Portuguese reality with regard to crime witness interviewing, and present the first published Portuguese protocol for applying the Cognitive Interview. The second article included in this thesis evaluates the effectiveness of a Cognitive Interview protocol we translated and adapted for the Portuguese language. As previously found for other CI protocols (Stein & Memon, 2006), the Portuguese CI elicited more information without compromising report accuracy. This was the first published Cognitive Interview protocol ever translated for Portuguese language, adapted and tested with a Portuguese population. In this study, other variables of interest were addressed such as participants’ ability to evaluate their error rate, and the impact of witnesses’ memory capacity and perception of interview appropriateness on witnesses’ reports. In the third article of this thesis, witnesses’ ability to spontaneously and naturally monitor their account when interviewed with the Cognitive Interview was addressed. We found participants were able to spontaneously monitor information they provided with the use of uncertainty verbal expressions such as 'maybe' or 'I think' for reporting less accurate information This research has important implications for practitioners, suggesting professionals can use witnesses’ ability to monitor their own account during the interview as an accuracy marker. Furthermore, this study addressed how other variables such as participants’ motivation to testify could influence their reports. Lastly, since new strategies for obtaining more information from crime witnesses are crucial in this field, we developed a new interview strategy, Category Clustering Recall. This recall strategy allowed the interviewer to obtain more detailed reports and may be useful during investigative interviews. The effectiveness of this recall strategy was evaluated in comparison with the change order mnemonic (forth article) and witness-compatible questioning (fifth article). Also included in this thesis is a general conclusion section where are discussed these studies’ contribution for developing new strategies to obtain better testimony and evaluating report accuracy, and for further understanding the psychological variables inherent to witness interviewing.

Name thesis:degree_name

Tese de Doutoramento em Psicologia Básica

Grantor

Universidade do Minho

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Paulo, Rui Miguel de Medeiros

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Albuquerque, Pedro Barbas
• Bull, Raymond Henry Charles

Statement dc:rights

• openAccess

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1822/46029

OAI record oai:identifier

http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Arepositorium.uminho.pt%3A1822%2F46029