The Enhanced Cognitive Interview
A step-by-step guide
Dr Becky Milne
Note:
(I) This booklet is based on:
(i) Fisher, R. P., and Geiselman, R. E. (1992). Memory-enhancing
techniques for investigative interviewing. Springfield, III: Charles C. Thomas.
(ii) Kohnken, G. (1993). The cognitive interview: A step-by-step introduction.
(iii) Milne, R., and Bull, R. (1999). Investigative interviewing: Psychology and practice. Chichester: Wiley.
(II) This material was jointly developed by Ray Bull, Angela Holley, Gunter Kohnken, Amina Memon, Becky Milne, and Linsey Wark.
Structure of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview
Phase 1:Greet and personalise the interview and Establish rapport
Phase 2:Explain the aims of the interview
Focused retrieval and Concentrate hard
Report everything
Transfer control
Phase 3:Initiate a free report
Context reinstatement
Open-ended question
Pauses and no interruptions
Phase 4:Questioning
Report everything
Interviewee-compatible questioning OK to say 'don't know'
OK to say 'don't understand'
Activate and probe an image
Open and appropriate closed questions
Phase 5:Varied and extensive retrieval
Change the temporal order
Change perspectives
Focus on all senses
Phase 6:Investigatively important questions
Phase 7:Summary
Phase 8:Closure
Phase 9:Evaluation
Phase 1
Greet and personalise the interview
Establish rapport
Greeting and personalising the interview
The opening phase of an interview will often determine how well the interview proceeds. Before you begin the interview it is therefore necessary to establish trust and lay the foundations for successful communication. Remember that you are often a stranger and unfamiliar to the interviewee and that he or she may feel uncomfortable. In order to reduce tension and insecurity it is essential that you introduce yourself by name and greet the interviewee with his or her name (i.e. personalise the interview). Greeting should occur because it is at the heart of effective rapport development, the next step of the interview process.
Paying attention to the appropriate form of address at the initial greeting can help to send the message of equality both now and throughout the interview. This is essential as it reduces the perceived authority differential between interviewer and interviewee so that interviewees are less likely to comply to leading questions (see later for a description of a leading question and examples). As there is no such thing as a perfect interview it is essential to start building resistance against inappropriate questions, which may unwittingly be used by an interviewer later in the interview.
The interviewer needs to treat the interviewee as an individual with an unique set of needs as opposed to being ‘just another interviewee’ of the day. This is because to obtain maximum retrieval is a difficult task requiring deep concentration. An interviewee therefore needs to feel like an integral part of the investigation in order to be fully motivated to work hard.
The interviewer needs to present him/herself as an identifiable person too. This is because humans dislike the unknown and will therefore prior to the interview draw upon past experiences and knowledge about police personnel and police interviews to help ascertain what to expect. This information may be attained from media representation of the police and as a result may not be particularly favourable. Thus, it is the job of the interviewer at the outset, and throughout, to lessen, any ‘stereotypes’ the interviewee may have. This can start through personalising the interview. Interviewers who are In uniform may have to spend more time on this and the next phase of the interview to overcome any barriers made by their clothing. First impressions count and the clothing an interviewer wears is a matter that can be considered before an interview. For example, interviewers in too formal attire may have more difficulty in personalising the interview and developing rapport when interviewing younger individuals.
Example:"You must be..... My name is...."
Establish rapport with the interviewee
The word rapport comes from the Latin portare meaning 'to carry'. Thus an interview in which rapport has been appropriately developed is natural and carries the participants along with it in a relaxed manner. Rapport is essential and a good rapport between interviewer and interviewee improve both the quantity and quality of information gained in the interview. Rapport therefore has a direct impact on the whole interview process itself. Rapport is so important that it could be said that if there is no rapport there is no point in continuing the interview. Rapport is especially important where the type of information required is highly personal. There are a number of reason why rapport is so important and these will now be examined.
The interviewee's anxiety needs to be reduced for maximum remembering. This is because, people only have a limited amount of processing power available and the aim is to have full power devoted to retrieving as much information as possible. Anxiety may detract from this. Thus, before you begin to ask the interviewee about the event it is very important to create a relaxing atmosphere and to make the interviewee feel secure and confident both with the interviewer and with the interview situation. A good way to achieve this is to ask some neutral questions not related to the 'incident' which can be answered positively and therefore create a positive mood.
Building rapport requires that you personally interact meaningfully with the interviewee, contributing as an interested party, not simply asking a series of census-like questions, for example, "Have you any children?" etc.. Such standardised phrases should be avoided as their use will convey to the interviewee that he or she is 'just another interviewee', which depersonalises the interview.
It is often a good idea to talk about yourself too as this openness can serve as a model to demonstrate what is required of the interviewee. This can also help to personalise the interview by making the interviewer more identifiable. For example, if the interviewee talks about a pet and you have a pet yourself you could mention this and describe your own experiences.
Ask open-ended questions. It is good preparation for the interview to encourage the interviewee to speak without interruptions when he or she is describing a familiar event, e.g. a recent holiday. Follow-up comments such as " I have not been there myself, what is it like?", have a dual role of helping to increase rapport and also priming the interviewee to give detailed, elaborated responses. Thus, rapport is also a training phase of the interview, training the interviewee what you expect of them later (i.e. that detailed responses are required).
Interviewees have different levels of language, and skilful interviewers tailor their own communication level to that of the interviewee using the same words as they do. It is in this rapport phase of the interview that the interviewer can start to assess the interviewee’s communication abilities (to build on Information gathered In planning and preparation) and this will allow them to develop an interactive model of interviewing determined and defined by the interviewee. This process is easier to do when examining interviewees detailed responses to open-ended questions. It is often useful to count how many words on average an interviewee uses per sentence, and use this figure as a guide to the length of sentences/questions the interviewer should use.
A guiding principle for developing rapport is to communicate empathy. Here the interviewer needs to demonstrate the understanding of the situation from the interviewee's perspective. At the start of the interview the interviewer should also allow the interviewee to vent her/his concerns and emotions about the incident(s) in question. These in turn can be used to explain the interviewer's investigative needs. This can help to initiate the next phase of describing the aims of the interview.
If the interviewee is nervous it will be important to continue to build rapport until he or she is fairly relaxed.
Phase 2
Explain the aims of the interview
Explain the purpose of the interview
It is important to explain to the interviewee what is to be expected from him or her, as for most interviewees an investigative interview is an alien situation. People typically fear the unexpected, and by describing the interview process this fear can be reduced.
There are a number of instructions, which need to be given at this point in the interview:
Interview factors
Focused retrieval and concentration
Report everything
Transfer of control of the interview
Each of these will now be examined in turn.
Interview factors
There are some details concerning the interview itself, which need to be explained to the interviewee.The reason for the interview needs to be given which in turn will make its focus clearer. The interviewer, however, needs to be careful not to comment on the nature of the offence otherwise this can be seen as leading the interviewee.
Questions such as; "Do you know why you are here today?" have been found to help at this stage of the interview.
The interviewer needs to give an explanation of the outline of the interview. The outline will take the form of the interviewer asking the interviewee to give an account of what they remember and following this with a few questions in order to clarify what the interviewee has said. This will be followed by summary and closure. Note that you may be taking a few brief notes at this stage. Check if the interviewee has any concerns regarding the interview process itself and address them.
Focused retrieval
Memory recall at the most detailed level requires focused attention and intense concentration. Therefore interviewers should attempt to promote focused concentration, as interviewees may not do this unless encouraged to do so and unless the interview environment is appropriate (i.e. no distractions). If there are too many distractions then the interviewee will find it very difficult to retrieve from the detailed level of memory. You should indicate that the task is not easy, but will require considerable concentration.
You could say,
"Try as hard as you can, really think about....because this can be quite difficult."
Interviewees also need to feel that they have an unlimited time for recall, so that they can effectively search memory and provide elaborate, detailed responses. If there is a restricted time, interviewees may shortened their responses accordingly, and shorter responses are usually less detailed.
Report Everything
You should not assume that the interviewee will volunteer a great amount of relevant information unless told to do so. Rather you should explicitly state your need for detail. The report everything instruction therefore encourages interviewees to report everything they remember without any editing, even if the interviewees think the details are not important/trivial or cannot remember completely a particular aspect of the incident.
For example,
"You were witness to the incident this morning, tell me everything you can, even the things you think are not important, and even if you cannot remember something completely or can only remember it partially. Everything which comes to mind tell me in your own time and pace".
There are a number of reasons for the effectiveness of this technique. Many interviewees may believe that the police already knows a lot about the event in question. As a result interviewees may not mention things they think are unimportant or which seem obvious, as interviewees do not want to be seen to be wasting police time. Some witnesses may (erroneously) believe that they know what types of information are of investigative value and therefore only report this type of information. In some cases this may result in interviewees mistakenly withholding important information. Thus, the instruction to report everything is likely to result in the reporting of information which otherwise may be held back by the interviewee. Interviewees may also withhold information if they cannot remember it completely. However, the recall of partial information may help the interviewer gain a more complete picture of the incident. (For example, if a witness recalls one character of a number plate and other witnesses each recall one other character).
An event is represented in memory at several different levels of precision, ranging from the very general to the very detailed. Which level the interviewee selects for reporting from depends, among other factors, on his/her past experiences with interviews, assumed communication rules and assumptions about the interviewer's knowledge of the incident. Unless asked to do so, interviewees tend to report from the general level. Telling the interviewee to report everything should get the interviewee to report from the more detailed level of the event representation. This should result in more correct details being reported.
In addition many people believe that their confidence is a reliable indicator of the accuracy of their recalled information and as a consequence report only that which they are confident about. Their recall may be edited if interviewees feel uncertain about certain pieces of information. However, research examining the within-person confidence-accuracy relationship suggests that there is by no means always a positive relationship. Thus, it is necessary to encourage interviewees to ignore the confidence or assumed importance that they give to specific pieces of information and to report everything even if they do not feel sure of this. (However, this encouragement must be tempered by clear instruction not to make anything up).
Transfer of control
The interviewee will expect the interviewer, usually an authority figure, to control the interview. In addition, police interviews presented in the media tend to be interviewer led and dominated by a stream of questions. Therefore this may be what the interviewee is expecting, an active interviewer asking a series of questions to a more or less passive interviewee whose only task is to answer these questions and wait for the next one.
This is not the case for the cognitive interviewer. Here the role of the interviewer is that of a facilitator. He or she facilitates retrieval and helps the interviewee to recall information from memory, as and when they require it, in order to gain as much information from memory as possible. Remember that it is the interviewee who has witnessed the event and therefore, has all the information. Consequently, the main person in this exercise is the interviewee, not the interviewer.
Helping the interviewee to recall this information from memory requires the interviewer to pass over control of the interview to him or her. Thus, at the start of the interview the interviewee needs explicitly to be informed of this. It is the interviewee who should do most of the mental work and most of the talking throughout the course of the interview, i.e. the witness should control the flow of the information.
Another reason why this instruction is so important is because detail is not often required in everyday communication. For example, when asking a colleague who has just returned from holiday "Did you have a good time?" only limited detail from them is actually sought. The reason for asking this question is generally out of being polite, common courtesy. This is because we learn from a young age what is termed the ‘Maxim of Quantity’, which states that detail in general communication is not required and may even be seen to be rude. However, in an investigative interview, the interviewee needs to give extensive detail and should do most of the talking. Unless directly told this the interviewee will not give such detail automatically as they will have years of experience of communicating which has dictated that to give detail is not necessary and to dominate the conversation by doing so is rude.
For example, the interviewer could say:
"I wasn't at the bank so I do not know what happened. You are the one with all the information, so tell me everything that you can remember".
Phase 3
Initiating a free report
The mental reinstatement of context
This instruction emanates from the research demonstrating that context can have a powerful effect on memory. It is sometimes easier to recall information if you are in the same place or context as that in which the encoding of the information took place. This helps us to explain why we are overcome with a surge of memories about our past life when we visit a place we once were (e.g. visiting a school you used to attend). The context in which an event was encoded is itself thought by some to be one of the most powerful retrieval aids. ‘Crimewatch’ reconstructions are attempting to reinstate the physical context of the event that took place in order to jog people's memories of the event itself.
Research has demonstrated the effects physical context can have on memory. Participants learnt a list of words either on land or 20 feet under water. Later the participants had to recall the previously learned list of words either on land or under water, thus participants were attempting to recall the words in the same context where they learnt the list or in a different context. It was found that those who learned the words on land recalled more of the words when they were also on land and those who learned the list of words under water recalled more of the words under water. Recall was approximately 50% higher when the learning and recalling contexts were the same.