Introduction

This chapter outlines working with/researching the police in the 1970s and 1980s to investigate the truth in relation to their expectations of increased effectiveness regarding recruit training and the memorability of briefings. Developing and assessing the effectiveness of the 'cognitive interview' that had been designed to assist witnesses to recall what truly happened. The chapter suggests that in Fisher and Geiselman's ground-breaking studies only one group of interviewers had received training; this might have increased their motivation which could have been noted by their interviewees and thus affected their recall performance. Indeed, many psychologists who conduct experiments often ignore this motivation issue when comparing performance across different conditions/parts of their studies. 'Investigative interviewing', in contrast to 'interrogating', seeks to gather relevant and truthful information from suspects rather than confessions. The chapter describes witnesses' spontaneous verbal expressions of uncertainty while recalling to be associated with lower accuracy of the directly associated information being recalled.