Enhancement of Eyewitness Memory with the Cognitive Interview

This research evaluated an innovative interview procedure, the cognitive interview, that was designed to aid eyewitnesses recall the details of crimes. Experiment 1 was conducted to examine the success of the cognitive interview in a nonstudent population. Fifty-one nonstudent volunteers viewed police training films of simulated violent crimes and were questioned individually in interactive interviews 48 hr later by experienced law-enforcement personnel. The cognitive interview elicited significantly more correct information from the subjects than did the standard police interview, and without an accompanying increase in incorrect information or confabulation. Experiment 2 was designed to separate the cognitive interview into its constituent parts and to evaluate the success of each mnemonic. It was concluded that all four general mnemonics contained in the interview (two increasing feature overlap between encoding and retrieval contexts; two encouraging use of many retrieval paths) are useful and should be retained. The cognitive interview is a viable memory-enhancement technique that is effective, efficient, and legally acceptable.