Offender
Profiling Series: Vol 1
Interviewing and Deception
Edited by David Canter & Laurence Alison
(1999)
back to Interviewing
& Deception
Interviewing and Deception
Mark R Kebbell & Graham F. Wagstaff
The Effectiveness of the Cognitive Interview
Eyewitnesses are an important part of most criminal
investigations though they rarely remember as much as the police would
like. Consequently, ways of improving eyewitness memory would be very
useful to police officers. This chapter evaluates the forensic effectiveness
of one of the most successful methods of improving eyewitness memory,
the cognitive interview. First, we discuss the limitations of standard
police interviewing. Second, we evaluate the effectiveness of the cognitive
interview in real investigations. Third, we look at research into police
officers perceptions of the cognitive interview. We conclude that the
cognitive interview can be a very effective aid to eyewitness memory.
However, two main problems are associated with its use. In practice,
the components of the cognitive interview are not used equally frequently
and police officers often believe that they do not have enough time
to conduct a cognitive interview.
