The moderating effects of absorption in facilitating recall in the cognitive interview

TL;DRAbstract

The Cognitive Interview (hereafter, CI) was created with the weaknesses associated with a standard police interview in mind (Geiselman, Fisher, Hutton, Sullivan, Avetissian, & Prosk, 1984). Ineffective tactics such as interrupting a witness, asking leading questions, and asking closed-ended questions are absent from the CI. Instead, the CI builds on Tulving’s (1974) idea that there are several retrieval paths to memory for an event. The CI utilizes a number of mnemonics to help facilitate recall. These include, reinstatement of the context, reporting everything, recalling events in a different order, and changing perspectives. The CI employs techniques similar to interviews involving a hypnotic induction (e.g., reinstating the context), while at the same time avoiding some of the pitfalls involved in hypnosis. Examples of the problems inherent in hypnotically enhanced interviews include an increase in confabulations and error rates (Diamond, 1980) and an increased likelihood of vie

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