The Cognitive Interview: Much more than simply "try again"

In the legal context, the elicitation of complete and accurate statements from witnesses and victims is essential. The Cognitive Interview (CT) was devised to improve eyewitnesses' memory by using mnemonic strategies which ask witnesses to think about what happened and encourage them to make as many retrieval attempts as possible. However, no known study has experimentally examined whether (or not) the CI superiority effect is something more than merely asking a witness to retrieve information four times. The aim of this study was to compare the recall obtained by means of the CI - in which mnemonics are used - to that obtained as a result of asking subjects to make a multiple free recall task-without using mnemonics-in a single interview session. It was expected that significant differences would still exist. Results confirmed this hypothesis.