How Effective is the Enhanced Cognitive Interview when Aiding Recall Retrieval of Older Adults including Memory for Conversation?

Abstract

The percentage of older adults in the general population is growing. As a result, older adults are coming more frequently into contact with the Criminal Justice System as witnesses to and victims of crime. Older adults are also over-represented in crimes where conversation detail is of particular importance to an investigation (e.g. distraction burglary). The present study therefore examined the efficacy of cognitive interview (CI) compared with structured interview in improving the recall of an event by older witnesses, specifically conversational detail. Young adults (19-54years old), young-old adults (60-74 years old), and old-old adults (75+years old) were asked to watch a short film of a laptop theft and were then, after a 1.5hour delay, randomly allocated to one of two interview conditions. It was found that the CI significantly increased recall of all age groups, without increasing the amount of incorrect or confabulated information reported. The individuals in the young adult and the young-old adult conditions were found to remember significantly more than the individuals from the old-old adult condition, without decreasing the accuracy of the information. The CI enhanced memory for conversation gist, person and action detail. Results will be discussed in relation to interviewing and investigating practices.

How Effective is the Cognitive Interview When Used with Adults with Intellectual Disabilities Specifically with Conversation Recall?

“…The observed increased recall of conversation gist information by both adults with and without ID when interviewed using the CI is consistent with and builds upon the works of Campos & Alonso‐Quecuty () and Prescott et al . (), who both used a sample which did not included adults with ID. This is important as conversation detail may be the only type of information that can lead to the successful prosecution of non‐physical crimes, such as verbal abuse (Campos & Alonso‐Quecuty ).…”

Constructive episodic simulation: Dissociable effects of a specificity induction on remembering, imagining, and describing in young and older adults.

“…The CI also includes techniques such as transferring control to the participant by telling them that they are the chief expert about their experience, which lowers perceived expectations that the participant is undergoing a test where the interviewer knows the answers and the interviewee does not, as well as minimizing the tendency to interrupt the participant and asking mainly open-ended questions to support free recall (Memon et al, 2010). Several previous studies using different age groups have shown that the CI increases the amount of accurate information received in both older and young adults (Dornburg & McDaniel, 2006; Holliday et al, 2012; Prescott, Milne, & Clark, 2011; Wright & Holliday, 2007), although some studies have failed to find beneficial effects in either age group (e.g., McMahon, 2000; for discussion, see Holliday et al, 2012). …”

The enhanced cognitive interview: expressions of uncertainty, motivation and its relation with report accuracy

“…to report somewhat uncertain information. ECI research (Dando & Milne, 2010;Prescott, Milne, & Clark, 2011) usually disregards such expressions in the coding and analysis. Thus, 'I think the robber had a gun' would (for example) simply be coded as 'the robber had a gun'.…”

“…Also noted was the phase within the interview in which an item of information was recalled. If an item of information (correct or not) was repeated during the same, or a subsequent phase, that information was scored only the first time it was mentioned (Prescott et al, 2011). We classified items of information as either 'certainties' or 'uncertainties'.…”

“…As several researchers (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992;Prescott, Milne, & Clark, 2011) have acknowledged over the years, interviewing witnesses is a key procedure that frequently determines the outcome of a police investigation. However, memory is not so accurate and what witnesses actually report rarely corresponds fully with what they remember (Bower, 1967), particularly when inadequate interviewing techniques are used (Flin, Boon, Knox, & Bull, 1992).…”