ABSTRACT
The Cognitive Interview (CI) was designed initially to assist police to elicit more information from witnesses to crime by incorporating principles of social dynamics, memory and cognition, and communication. As many of these underlying psychological processes are also critical for people recalling other, non-criminal events (e.g., accidents), we adapted the CI to be used to assist people to remember a variety of experiences. The chapter reviews much of the empirical testing of the CI in such non-criminal experiences: car and industrial accidents, blood donations, earlier conversations, public health events, hostage-takings, etc. We describe both lab and field studies, and also include professional investigators’ descriptions of their experiences of using the CI in real-world investigations (e.g., debriefing hostages about their captors; interviewing a soldier about a military attack; interviewing an informant in a narcotics investigation). The chapter also describes using the CI to facilitate recalling past mental activities (e.g., decisions and emotions). We offer some suggestions about the kinds of investigation in which the CI is most likely and least likely to be effective. Finally, we make some critical comments about previous CI research and offer some suggestions about directions to take in the future.
