ABSTRACT
Eyewitnesses are an important part of most criminal investigations though they rarely remember as much as the police would like. Consequently, ways of improving eyewitness memory would be very useful to police officers. This chapter evaluates the forensic effectiveness of one of the most successful methods of improving eyewitness memory, the cognitive interview. First, we discuss the limitations of standard police interviewing. Second, we evaluate the effectiveness of the cognitive interview in real investigations. Third, we look at research into police officers perceptions of the cognitive interview. We conclude that the cognitive interview can be a very effective aid to eyewitness memory. However, two main problems are associated with its use. In practice, the components of the cognitive interview are not used equally frequently and police officers often believe that they do not have enough time to conduct a cognitive interview.
