Psychology: Cognitive .V. Standard Interviews

Just.A.Girl

Could someone please explain or define a cognitive interview and a standard interview. I understand that cognitive interviews often provide more information from witnesses etc but how to the two actually differ?

Thanks

Reply 1

Peteo

Basically a cognitive interview is a more accurate way to interview people.

It can be characterised by four distinct components:

1. Report everything-interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event, even though it may seem irrelevent.

2. Mental reinstatement of oringinal context-interviewer encourages interviewee to mentally recreate the environment and contacts from thew oringinal incident.

3. Changing the order-interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident,for example by reversing the order which events occured.

4. Changing the perspective-the interviewee is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives, for examplke by imaging how would have appeared to other witnesses present at the time.

A standard interview is just a normal interview. Cognitive interviews are far superior to standard interviews for recalling information, however due to the time it takes, police often only use stages 1 and 2 of the cognitive interview.

I hope this helps, if you need anymore help, just ask :smile: