CFI CFI Cognitive Interview Methods & Memory Enhancement 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the primary goal of the cognitive interview technique developed by Fisher and Geiselman?
- To intimidate witnesses into confessing
- To enhance accurate memory retrieval through mental reinstatement and open-ended recall (Correct answer)
- To speed up the interviewing process
- To replace traditional questioning methods entirely
Correct answer: To enhance accurate memory retrieval through mental reinstatement and open-ended recall
The cognitive interview uses mental context reinstatement, report everything, change perspective, and change order to maximize accurate eyewitness memory retrieval.
Question 2: Which cognitive interview component asks the witness to mentally return to the scene and recall all sensory details present at the time?
- Change temporal order
- Report everything
- Mental context reinstatement (Correct answer)
- Change perspective
Correct answer: Mental context reinstatement
Mental context reinstatement instructs the witness to mentally revisit the physical and emotional environment of the event to trigger associated memories.
Question 3: The 'report everything' instruction in the cognitive interview is designed to:
- Encourage witnesses to speculate beyond their memory
- Reduce the number of irrelevant details shared
- Overcome the tendency to omit information perceived as unimportant (Correct answer)
- Focus the witness only on the suspect's appearance
Correct answer: Overcome the tendency to omit information perceived as unimportant
Witnesses often self-censor details they think are unimportant, so 'report everything' ensures no potentially valuable information is omitted.
Question 4: When using the 'change temporal order' technique in a cognitive interview, the interviewer asks the witness to:
- Describe events in reverse or non-chronological sequence to access different memory traces (Correct answer)
- Recount only the most important events first
- List events alphabetically by category
- Focus exclusively on the ending of the incident
Correct answer: Describe events in reverse or non-chronological sequence to access different memory traces
Recalling events in a different temporal order (e.g., backward) can help retrieve additional details that standard forward recall misses.
Question 5: Which factor most significantly degrades eyewitness memory accuracy according to cognitive interview research?
- High witness intelligence
- Stress and emotional arousal during the event (Correct answer)
- Familiarity with the crime location
- Witness age above 30
Correct answer: Stress and emotional arousal during the event
High stress and arousal can impair encoding of peripheral details while sometimes narrowing focus to central threat-related stimuli, affecting overall accuracy.
Question 6: The 'change perspective' component of the cognitive interview should be accompanied by what important clarification to the witness?
- That they must fabricate what others would have seen
- That they should speculate freely about unobserved events
- That they should only report what they actually perceived, not guess (Correct answer)
- That the perspective change replaces their own account
Correct answer: That they should only report what they actually perceived, not guess
Interviewers must clarify that witnesses should not speculate or guess when adopting another's perspective, only report what they truly perceived from that vantage point.
CFI CFI Cognitive Interview Methods & Memory Enhancement 1
What is the primary goal of the cognitive interview technique developed by Fisher and Geiselman?