The Cognitive Interview: A meta-analytic review and study space analysis of the past 25 years.

Abstract

The Cognitive Interview (CI) is a well-established protocol for interviewing wit- nesses. The current article presents a study space analysis of laboratory studies of the CI together with an empirical meta-analysis summarizing the past 25 years of research. The study space comprises 57 published articles (65 experiments) on the CI, providing an assessment of the boundary conditions underlying the analysis and application of this interview protocol. The current meta-analysis includes 46 pub- lished articles, including 20 articles published since the last meta-analysis conducted a decade earlier (Kohnken, Milne, Memon, & Bull, 1999). Reassuringly for prac- titioners, the findings of the original meta-analysis were replicated with a large and significant increase in correct details and a small increase in errors. In addition we found that there were no differences in the rate at which details are confabulated. Importantly, the effect sizes were unaffected by the inclusion of recent studies using modified versions of the CI. The CI appeared to benefit older adult witnesses even more than younger adults. We highlight trends and gaps in research and discuss how our findings can inform policy and training decisions. The Cognitive Interview (or CI) is perhaps one of the most successful developments in psychology and law research in the last 25 years. It is a method that comprises a series of memory retrieval and communication techniques designed to increase the amount of information that can be obtained from an interviewee. The CI was initially developed 25 years ago by psychologists Ed Geiselman and Ron Fisher as a response to the many requests they received from police officers and legal professionals for a method of improving witness inter- views. It is based upon established psychological principles of remembering and retrieval of information from memory, and empirical laboratory research on the CI has documented its ability to dramatically improve the number of correct details while only slightly increasing the number of incorrect details (Schrieber & Fisher, 2006; Kohnken et al., 1999; Memon, 2006). Field tests of the CI have also indicated that police officers trained in its techniques gain more information and