Cognitive Interview Method - Literature review Example

Abstract Cognitive interview method that has been used has been known as having potential to have a witness recall. It has been adopted by police forces and the aim of this study is to understand deeper the advantages of this method. The study will also cover the aspect of trained and untrained officers for the study as trained officers can significantly use instructions to reinstate context and there has been use of different orders and there will be change in perspective and imagery. There will be certain components that will be used well in the interview process and there will be certain components that may not be used well. The components like establishing rapport with the accused, reporting everything, encouraging concentration, compataible questioning of witness and there will be mental reinstatement of context. Cognitive interview was supposed to be a useful procedure for the correct recall and the problem of not being able to do the cognitive interview will be also discussed in detail. The main techniques that has been used in Cognitive interview can be summarized as follows Introduction Child sexual abuse has been a big problem all over the world and that has been prevalent in United States of America. The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children has reported that more than 78000 children has been sexually abused in United States of America and that has been at the rate of 1.2 per 1000 children. The numbers may not be considered as exhaustive and the assumption is that sexual abuse will be much higher. Flood has reported that the failure to make sure that sexual abuse to be reported has led to the increase in the sexual abuse. There has been report that only 4% of the sexual abuse children have been removed from home. Boney-McCoy, S., & Finkelhor, D has stated that history of sexual abuse has every chance of increasing the chance of revictimization.There has to be importance in forensic interview that the victim and the falsely accused persons are helped but making sure that the real culprits are bought in front of law. The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children has stated that the purpose of forensic interview will be to get complete and accurate report from the alleged child and adolescent victim and this has to be done to know the effect of victimization. Carnes, C. N., Wilson, C., & Nelson-Gardell, D has stated that the law enforcement officers will be conducting interviews and that will also contain child protective services personnel and specialized forensic interviewers.Bruck has said that bad interview method can lead to wrong answers. Carnes, C. N., Nelson-Gardell, D., Wilson, C., & Orgassa, U. C has stated that the bad effect can be giving strength to false allegations and making children and family going through stress and decreasing the child victim credibility in court, the contamination of facts and there will be reduction in probability of conviction and there will draining of resource through unsuccessful trials and investigations and reducing the resource that will be available for legitimate abuse case. Wood has stated that the interview has to be done in the best method possible. Factors influencing disclosure during interview Tyler has stated that children have been reluctant to disclose information about sexual abuse as the topic is very private, embarrassing and shameful topic to be discussed. The children may be tempted not to disclose the information. The forensic interview should be done in such a way that the disclosure rate should be increased. There are several factors that will determine the success like the gender, age and the interview. Cognitive interview method has been used in forensic interview that involves child sexual abuse and Geiselman has developed the technique of cognitive interview for using with adult witness and victims. The technique that has been used normally is reconstructing the event mentally, reporting every detail of the case without thinking of importance, getting the event to be described in different styles, and describing the event from different perspective and these has been described as Saywitz.The research has shown that cognitive interview has been effective in improving the recall of events by children though it has been shown through research that it works well with older children and as said by Saywitz,1992,it has been used by the original cognitive interview by the children. There was a randomized control trial that examined the utility of doing or conducting cognitive interview that can be stated as practice and there was interviewing the child about the event under investigation. The child participants were kept in a waiting room and undergraduate research assistant who was dressed as surfer dude introduced to the waiting children. The event that was put under investigation was the argument over the use of slide projector that was used in a slide show and was witnessed by the child participants. There were at least ninety children who were between the age of eight and 12.The finding has been conclusive in stating that twenty six percent has been recalling correct facts over standard interviewing techniques. The improvement has been greater when more than one method of cognitive interview techniques has been used together rather than relying on only one interview method. The result has been supportive of using the cognitive interview method and the limitation can be said as lack of general to child sexual abuse victims in participating forensic interviews. Davies, G. M., Westcott, H. L., & Horan, N has examined the effectiveness of the different components of cognitive interview method in the children who has been between the age of five and eleven. The component that has been tested was the mental context reinstatement and reporting every detail. The test was done in 128 persons and the components was chosen because they have been found to be the most appropriate to use and the information that has been able to recall has been higher than the standard interview method. The finding was greater in older children and that has to be noted .There was a slight increase of confabulations from the part of the children free recall stating that there should be careful when using cognitive method. Hershkowitz has conducted a randomized controlled trial and that has been comparing one component of the cognitive interview with other method and that has included mental context reinstatement to be compared with physical context reinstatement. The physical context reinstatement included the exposing the individual to the actual setting in which the event has occurred and that has meant the child has or will be taken to the alleged scene of crime. The study was done in Israel when more than 142 forensic interviews have been done and the study included the children between the age of four and thirteen. The study has stated that children that has been studied in the mental context reinstatement group that provided longer response when compared with children that has been in the context reinstatement group that can be stated as control group. The study gave insight of using mental context reinstatement in cognitive interview method. The lab settings and studies has been done in context reinstatement and that has been said as the witness encouraged to recall various aspect of the crime as it occurred like the weather on the day of the crime, the dress that was worn on the day of crime, the surroundings that was at the scene of crime and this contextual details has been said as trivial when referring to the context of the study, their retrieval can give valuable insights to the memory of the accused. The recall can be increased by asking specific questions about the setting of crime and the witness may be taken to the scene of crime and will be shown photographs of the crime. The mental state at the time of doing the crime can be understood by asking the specific question. The change perspective incident can be explained as the case of bank robbery when the witness that has been standing on the queue will be asked the question to describe how the cashier would have seen the incident and describe it. The reverse order instruction will be just like rewinding the process and all these steps can be attributed to multiple retrieval system. That has been said because failure of one cue will be opened by another one and that will also help to prevent the formation of scripted description of crime when the accused party has learned from some other crime. The cognitive interview method has been changed into extended cognitive interview method and this method will be encouraging the victim to be relaxed and speak slowly so that clarifications can be asked. Gieselman has carried out the scientific validity of cognitive interview method and the participants were shown videotape of the crime and the participants were asked to participate in the cognitive interview method after watching the video. The test had shown that cognitive interview method was found to be the successful method in gaining more information from the participants than from any other method. There was a review of 42 interview test that has been done and Gieselman has concluded that cognitive method has been the most successful in getting the information faster. The cognitive interview method has been found to be retrieving information that has been incorrect also. Gieselman has found out that cognitive interview method has been found to be less error when used with children than with standard interview method and cognitive method has been helpful in making sure that the children has been less confused in answering questions using cognitive method. Gieselman has carried out a survey among 161 police officers and it has been found out that the majority of them agreed with that cognitive interview method has been useful in getting the information and the two faults identified were the length of duration of the study and incorrect information also sweeping in. Milne, Rebecca and Bull, Ray had taken the cognitive test method forward when four groups were given the chance to watch the video proceedings of the crime. The four groups were then put into a different test pattern with three groups receiving cognitive method and one group receiving the standard interview method. In the three groups that received the cognitive interview method the study was divided into full cognitive interview method, one group received context reinstatement, one group received recall everything. The one group that received cognitive interview method had been the most fruitful method in recollecting the facts rather than the single subsets of the cognitive method. The cognitive interview method has been found to be not useful when done with small children and there would be negative accuracy of statements from their part. The small children as said by Fisher, R. P., et al has been found to be having trouble with change perspective and that aspect has been omitted when interview has been done with small children.Memon has concluded that cognitive interview method has been found o be effective from eight year onwards. The long retention interval methods will cause a problem in cognitive interview method and as said by Memon,when a test was done on children of age group between 8 and 11 and comprising of 10 children, they were asked to recollect the magic show which they had seen two days before and they were able to recollect facts better than the standard interview method. As the same test was doe after 14 days after the show, there was lot of incorrect information that was sweeping in. Conclusion Fisher, R. P., Geiselman, R. E., and Amador, M has stated that interview questions may encourage more answers and more errors from the part of the answers and cognitive method need not be blamed for that reason. Cognitive method has been found to be useful from the part of forensics and lot of success will be depending on the interview and training. Cognitive interview method has been validated by method of experiment and by practical method. Cognitive interview method has been found to be reliable than alternatives as said by Cutler, B., Penrod, S. D., and Martens, T. K . Reference American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC). (2002). Practice guidelines: Investigative interviewing in cases of alleged child abuse. Boney-McCoy, S., & Finkelhor, D. (1995). ‘Prior victimization: A risk factor for child sexual abuse and for PTSD-related symptomatology among sexually abused youth’, Child Abuse and Neglect, Vol.19, pp.1401–1421. Bruck, M., & Ceci, S. J. (1995). Amicus brief for the case of State of New Jersey v. Michaels presented by Committee of Concerned Social Scientists. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol.1, pp.272– 322. Carnes, C. N., Wilson, C., & Nelson-Gardell, D. (1999). Extended forensic evaluation when sexual abuse is suspected: A model and preliminary data. Child Maltreatment,Vol. 4, pp.242– 254. Carnes, C. N., Nelson-Gardell, D., Wilson, C., & Orgassa, U. C. (2001). Extended forensic evaluation when sexual abuse is suspected: A multisite field study. Child Maltreatment, Vol.6, pp.230– 242. Cutler, B., Penrod, S. D., and Martens, T. K. (1987), 'Improving the reliability of eyewitness identifications: putting context into context', Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.72, pp.629-637. Davies, G. M., Westcott, H. L., & Horan, N. (2000). The impact of questioning style on the content of investigative interviews with suspected child sexual abuse victims. Psychology, Crime, and Law, 6, 81– 97. Fisher, R. P., Geiselman, R. E., and Amador, M. (1989), 'Field test of the cognitive interview: enhancing the recollection of actual victims and witnesses of crime', Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.74, pp.722-727 Fisher, R. P., et al. (2000), 'Adapting the cognitive interview to enhance long term recall of physical activities', Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.85, pp.180-189. Geiselman, R. E., Fisher, R. P., Firstenberg, I., Hutton, L. A., Sullivan, S., Avetissian, I., et al. (1984). Enhancement of eyewitness memory: An empirical evaluation of the cognitive interview. Journal of Police Science and Administration, Vol.12, pp.74–80. Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M., Sternberg, K. J., & Horowitz, D. (2002). A comparison of mental and physical context reinstatement in forensic interviews with alleged victims of sexual abuse. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol.16, pp.429– 441. Memon, A. and Bull, R. (1991), 'The cognitive interview - its origins, empirical support, evaluation and practical implications', Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, Vol.1 (4), pp.291-307 Milne, Rebecca and Bull, Ray (2006), 'Interviewing victims of crime, including children and people with intellectual disabilities', in M. Kebbrell and G. Davies (eds.), Practical Psychology for Forensic Investigations and Prosecutions (Chichester: Wiley), pp.7-24 Saywitz, K. J., Geiselman, R. E., & Bornstein, G. K. (1992). Effects of cognitive interviewing and practice on children’s recall performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.77, pp.744– 756. Tyler, K. A. (2002). Social and emotional outcomes of childhood sexual abuse: A review of recent research. Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol.7, pp.567–589. Wood, J. M., & Garven, S. (2000). How sexual abuse interviews go astray: Implications for prosecutors, police, and child protection services. Child Maltreatment, Vol.5, pp.109– 118. Read More

ruck has said that bad interview method can lead to wrong answers. Carnes, C. N., Nelson-Gardell, D., Wilson, C., & Orgassa, U. C has stated that the bad effect can be giving strength to false allegations and making children and family going through stress and decreasing the child victim credibility in court, the contamination of facts and there will be reduction in probability of conviction and there will draining of resource through unsuccessful trials and investigations and reducing the resource that will be available for legitimate abuse case.

Wood has stated that the interview has to be done in the best method possible. Factors influencing disclosure during interview Tyler has stated that children have been reluctant to disclose information about sexual abuse as the topic is very private, embarrassing and shameful topic to be discussed. The children may be tempted not to disclose the information. The forensic interview should be done in such a way that the disclosure rate should be increased. There are several factors that will determine the success like the gender, age and the interview.

Cognitive interview method has been used in forensic interview that involves child sexual abuse and Geiselman has developed the technique of cognitive interview for using with adult witness and victims. The technique that has been used normally is reconstructing the event mentally, reporting every detail of the case without thinking of importance, getting the event to be described in different styles, and describing the event from different perspective and these has been described as Saywitz.

The research has shown that cognitive interview has been effective in improving the recall of events by children though it has been shown through research that it works well with older children and as said by Saywitz,1992,it has been used by the original cognitive interview by the children. There was a randomized control trial that examined the utility of doing or conducting cognitive interview that can be stated as practice and there was interviewing the child about the event under investigation.

The child participants were kept in a waiting room and undergraduate research assistant who was dressed as surfer dude introduced to the waiting children. The event that was put under investigation was the argument over the use of slide projector that was used in a slide show and was witnessed by the child participants. There were at least ninety children who were between the age of eight and 12.The finding has been conclusive in stating that twenty six percent has been recalling correct facts over standard interviewing techniques.

The improvement has been greater when more than one method of cognitive interview techniques has been used together rather than relying on only one interview method. The result has been supportive of using the cognitive interview method and the limitation can be said as lack of general to child sexual abuse victims in participating forensic interviews. Davies, G. M., Westcott, H. L., & Horan, N has examined the effectiveness of the different components of cognitive interview method in the children who has been between the age of five and eleven.

The component that has been tested was the mental context reinstatement and reporting every detail. The test was done in 128 persons and the components was chosen because they have been found to be the most appropriate to use and the information that has been able to recall has been higher than the standard interview method. The finding was greater in older children and that has to be noted .There was a slight increase of confabulations from the part of the children free recall stating that there should be careful when using cognitive method.

Hershkowitz has conducted a randomized controlled trial and that has been comparing one component of the cognitive interview with other method and that has included mental context reinstatement to be compared with physical context reinstatement.

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