Interviewing Eyewitnesses Research Paper - Research Paper Examples

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Eyewitness researchers have attempted to take what we know about memory and social influence and wrap it into a set of procedures for interviewing eyewitnesses. This has resulted in a number of empirically based investigative interviewing tools. Some of these tools have been successfully implemented into current police practice. The most developed and researched procedural package for gathering detailed reports from cooperative eyewitnesses without compromising overall accuracy is the Cognitive Interview (CI). Since its development 25 years ago, novel and alternative interviewing strategies have been developed, including the Self-Administered Interview# (SAI), a pen-and-paper version of the CI. The SAI can be administered at the crime scene and to multiple witnesses simultaneously, thereby reducing police time and resources.

Although a lot has been achieved during the past two decades with regard to improving and standardizing investigative interviewing of witnesses, victims, and suspects, especially in the UK, there remain controversial policy issues, such as how to best train investigative interviewers and which methods to use for recording interviews. Under researched areas include how to best interview vulnerable suspects and procedures and practices for interviewing traumatized victims and witnesses. It is important to promote the collaboration between practitioners and academics to ensure that investigative interviewing practice continues to evolve and is driven by contemporary theories and research findings.

Fundamentals

Investigative interviewing is an essential information-gathering tool in any context where the interviewer needs to find out what if anything has happened and where the goal is to achieve as accurate recall as possible. The need to obtain credible information in an investigative context has become even more important given the increase in terrorist offences around the world. Kohnken (1995), in a review of the information processing approach to interviewing, highlights the numerous uses of an interview ranging from an expert witness interviewing children and adults during competency assessments and custody disputes to obtaining information about present moods, attitudes, opinions and to establishing rapport with the interviewee. This research paper focuses primarily on the forensic applications of interviewing where the goal is to obtain accurate and complete information from a victim or witness about some action or behavior they experienced in the past.

In order to be able to interview eyewitnesses effectively, police officers and other members of the Criminal Justice System need to understand how memory works. It is crucial to consider which factors may impact memory and how to obtain reliable and accurate information about past events. In a nutshell, the process of remembering information can be subdivided into three different components: encoding, storage, and retrieval (Tulving 1995). Encoding refers to the initial intake of information by our sensory systems. Thus, for an eyewitness to be able to describe the face of a perpetrator during a police interview, he or she would need to have paid attention to the perpetrator’s face when the crime occurred. Assuming the information is encoded, it will be stored in our memory system until it needs to be accessed again. Information that has been successfully encoded and stored can then be retrieved.

Why Does Our Memory Fail?

People may fail to remember information due to problems with encoding, storage, or retrieval. For instance, information might not have been encoded in the first place. This might happen due to external factors such as poor visibility or objects obstructing the view or internal factors such as the witness not paying attention to specific details. Several cognitive psychology studies have investigated the change-blindness phenomenon, the failure to observe large changes in a scene which would normally not go unrecognized (Simons and Rensink 2005). A well-known psychology study of change blindness is the gorilla experiment by Simons and Chabris (1999) in which participants were asked to watch a video clip showing a basketball match and to count how many passes the players were making. In the middle of the clip, a gorilla walked through the scene. It was found that more than half of the participants (66 %) failed to notice the gorilla. The change-blindness phenomenon has been replicated numerous times with different paradigms and different stimuli (see Simons and Rensink (2005) for an overview), and the findings have strong practical implications particularly in forensic settings. During the occurrence of a crime, the failure to detect changes in the scene can have dramatic consequences. Investigative officers need to be aware that problems with encoding are not uncommon in humans and might influence what the witness subsequently recalls and how accurate this information is.

Some information we encode may enter our memory but will be forgotten quickly afterwards. Not all information is stored efficiently, and most information is forgotten soon after the incident has happened (Ebbinghaus 1964/1885). Therefore, it is not unusual for an eyewitness to say, “I don’t remember what the perpetrator looked like.”

During the interview process itself when the witness engages in retrieval, several factors may impact how much will be recalled and how accurate this information is. The way a question is phrased and characteristics of the interviewer can influence how much a witness discloses and/or remembers and how accurate this information is likely to be (Milne and Bull 1999). Generally, open-ended questions and free-recall instructions, such as “Tell me everything,” do elicit accurate responses from witnesses, but often the provided information is sparse (Davies et al. 1989). The interviewer might feel the need to ask more specific questions to generate a detailed account or to elaborate on specific details; however, the more specific the questioning style becomes, the less accurate the responses may be. Leading and suggestive questions should be avoided, since they imply the desired answer to the interviewee.

The misinformation studies by Elizabeth Loftus provide a potent illustration of this problem. During a well-known and often-replicated experiment (Loftus et al. 1978), participants were presented with slides depicting an automobile pedestrian accident at a junction with either a yield or a stop sign. Subsequently, half of the participants were asked whether the car stopped at a stop sign and the other half whether it stopped at a yield sign. Thus, half of the participants received misleading post-event information in the form of a suggestive question. After a delay, participants engaged in a forced-choice recognition test. The two presented choices were slides depicting the car accident with either the yield sign or the stop sign. A significant difference was obtained between the control and the misled group, with the misled group making considerably more errors and reporting considerably more often to have seen the misleading post-event information in the original slide.

Misleading post-event information can manifest itself in many different ways, such as in written format or provided by an individual, for example, a co-witness. The feedback a police officer may give to a witness, for example, during or after an identification task, can be also regarded as post-event information and may influence how confident the witness is about the task at hand, as well as how he or she remembers the original event. Wells and Bradfield (1998) conducted a study during which participants had to identify suspects from photo spread arrays. After identifications had been made, participants received either confirming feedback that they picked the suspect or disconfirming feedback that they selected the wrong person. Feedback manipulation did not only affect participants’ reports about how confident they were when they made the identification but also the accounts about the original event, such as memories about the viewing conditions present at the original event. These studies highlight how important it is for an investigative interviewer to be aware of the fragility of memory and how differences in questioning style and content can influence the completeness and accuracy of a witness account.

Current Investigative Interviewing Techniques In The UK

Given the importance of accurate recollection during investigative interviews, researchers have developed techniques to increase the quantity and quality of witness accounts, which are based on theoretical knowledge about how our memory works (Fisher et al. 2011). Some of these techniques are developed for specific witness populations, such as children, whereas others are developed to be used in much broader settings.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) developed a structured interview protocol for interviewing child witnesses, specifically focusing on child abuse victims (Lamb et al. 2007). The protocol can be divided into two phases: the presubstantive and substantive interview phase. During the pre-substantive phase, the interviewer introduces himself or herself and explains the purpose and the ground rules of the interview. The rapport phase creates a comfortable and supportive atmosphere and enhances the interpersonal relationship between interviewer and interviewee. The child will be asked to report an experienced event unrelated to the incident in question, to familiarize himself or herself with the open-ended questioning approach, and to demonstrate the level of detail which is expected during the substantive interview phase. During the transition from pre-substantive to substantive phase, a couple of open-ended prompts are used to identify the target event under investigation. If the child makes an allegation, the interviewer starts the substantive phase with an open invitation (“Tell me what happened”) followed by other free-recall prompts (“Tell me more about it” or “What happened then?”). After the initial free narrative, the interviewer prompts the child with cued questions (“When did it happen?” or “Who was there?”) to obtain a more complete and detailed account. If necessary, option-posing questions can be used in the end to obtain crucial details not previously disclosed by the child. Interviewers are advised to not use any suggestive questions at any time during the interview (Lamb et al. 2007). The NICHD has been tested empirically in several field studies in different countries, among others, in the UK, France, and Israel. A recurrent finding is that interviewers using the NICHD protocol asked in general more open-ended questions and fewer focused, option-posing, and suggestive questions than interviewers who employed a standard interview. In addition, interviewers using the NICHD technique imposed focused, option-posing, and suggestive questions much later during the progression of the interview. Regardless of age, children interviewed with the NICHD protocol provided more information during the openended prompts, and significantly fewer details were revealed with direct, option-posing, and suggestive questions. Importantly, no age differences were found, suggesting that the NICHD protocol can be regarded as a suitable interview technique for children as young as 3 years of age (Cyr and Lamb 2009).

An interview technique focusing more on the general population is the Cognitive Interview (CI). It was developed by Ed Geiselman (University of California, Los Angeles) and Ron Fisher (Florida International University) in the 1980s (Fisher and Geiselman 1992) and since then has been tested and applied in various interviewing settings and with different witness populations, including adults with and without intellectual disabilities, children, and the elderly (see the meta-analysis by Memon et al. (2010) for a comprehensive overview). In its structure, the CI is very similar to the NICHD; however, it is unique in that it comprises several memoryretrieval techniques also known as mnemonics, which are based on fundamental theoretical principles regarding memory organization, storage, and retrieval. One of these principles is Tulving and Thomson’s encoding specificity hypothesis (1973), which states that successful retrieval of information is most likely when the context and the cues present at retrieval match those present at the initial encoding. Reinstatement of the initial encoding context should therefore lead to an increase in accessibility of the stored information. Godden and Baddeley (1975) tested this assumption empirically by asking participants to learn word lists either underwater or on land. Subsequently half of the participants who learned the words underwater engaged in retrieval underwater, whereas the other half retrieved the words on land. The same retrieval procedure was applied to participants who encoded the words on land. Intriguingly, participants who encoded the words underwater were better at recalling them underwater compared to on land, whereas participants who learned the word lists on land recalled more items on land than underwater.

In an eyewitness situation, it is unlikely that cues which were present during encoding will be physically present at retrieval, since the investigative interview will probably take place in a police station. However, witnesses can be encouraged to reinstate the context of the original event mentally, thereby inducing cues which may facilitate their recall. The second memory principle is Bower’s multiple-component memory trace theory (1967), which proposes that our memory is a network of associations rather than an accumulation of single, unconnected incidents. Consequently, there are multiple ways to access or cue one specific memory.

Initially, the CI consisted of four general retrieval techniques: mental context reinstatement, report-everything instruction, change-perspective, and reverse-order technique. During the mental context reinstatement, the interviewee is instructed to form a mental image of the physical and personal context present at the witnessed event. The interviewer can help the interviewee during this task by encouraging them to imagine what they could see, hear, and smell when the incident occurred and to think about any experienced feelings. The second technique is to ask the interviewee to report everything they have seen, including small, unimportant, and partial information. This technique may encourage witnesses to recall the event from a more detailed memory level. Research by Milne and Bull (2002) suggests that the mental context reinstatement together with the report-everything instruction is the most effective component of the CI. The change-perspective and reverse-order techniques are based on the assumption that information not accessible via one route might be accessible via another route. The change-perspective technique encourages the interviewee to recall the event from different perspectives, for example, from the perspective of another witness or from another angle. The reverse-order technique asks the witness to recall the event from different starting points or from a different chronological order. Both techniques encourage the interviewee to use different retrieval routes to access the information in question.

The CI was revised several times to increase its effectiveness and to make it more suitable to the needs of different witness populations. The revisions focused mostly on the enhancement of social dynamics and communication between interviewer and interviewee (Fisher et al. 2011). The following techniques are part of the revised CI: rapport building, focused retrieval, and interviewee compatible questions. Rapport building refers to the attempt to get to know the witness better and to make him/her feel more at ease. An important part of the rapport building is the transfer of control, during which the interviewer makes clear that it is the witness who has the knowledge of what happened and the interviewer does not know anything. Therefore, the interviewee is the active one doing all the talking, while the interviewer, who is the listener, is passive. During the questioning phase, where the interviewer takes the lead in asking questions based on what the witness has said in free recall, some additional techniques are used. Focused retrieval encourages the interviewee to form mental images of specific details. Interviewee compatible questions are guided by the interviewee’s pattern of recall and prevent disruptions during retrieval. Empirical tests as well as field studies have revealed that the CI elicits significantly more correct information than control interviews (25–50 % more), without a significant decrease in accuracy rates (see Fisher et al. (2011) for a review and for a meta-analysis; Memon et al. 2010).

Although the beneficial effects of the CI are well established through laboratory and field studies, research has revealed that police officers often do not follow the whole procedure and/or only use aspects of the CI they consider as useful (Oxburgh and Dando 2011). Moreover, officers tend to find the CI too time consuming, difficult to administer, and sometimes not appropriate for specific cases they are dealing with. In particular, police officers report that they have difficulty applying the mental context reinstatement component of the CI (Dando et al. 2009). On the basis of these practical limitations, Dando and colleagues developed a modified mental context reinstatement technique called Sketch Mental Context Reinstatement (MCR). The sketch procedure appears to be more time efficient and easier to administer especially for frontline police officers.

In a recent laboratory study (Dando et al. 2009), participants received either Sketch MCR, traditional MCR, or no MCR during a structured interview protocol after having watched a criminal event. Participants in the Sketch MCR condition were provided with a pen and paper and were instructed to draw a detailed plan or sketch of the event they had witnessed. Interview protocols including the original MCR and the new Sketch MCR elicited significantly more correct details than the no MCR condition. The accuracy rate was significantly higher for Sketch MCR interviews than for original and no MCR interview protocols. These findings imply that a CI interview protocol including the Sketch MCR technique can be regarded as effective as an original CI. Beyond that, CI protocols comprising the Sketch MCR were significantly shorter in duration than the original MCR CI protocols, which can be regarded as an enormous benefit considering the limited resources available to frontline police officers. In addition to the pragmatic benefits, the Sketch MCR technique may be also particularly suitable for vulnerable witness populations, such as the elderly, since it places fewer cognitive demands on the witness.

Recently, a pen-and-paper version of the CI was developed by Gabbert et al. (2009) to protect witness memory from the negative effects of delay and misleading post-event information. The novel recall tool is called Self-Administered Interview# (SAI) and can be administered to witnesses after the incident has happened. Empirical research has shown that it is crucial to interview witnesses as soon as possible after an incident has occurred to be able to obtain accurate and reliable accounts (Tuckey and Brewer 2003); however, this is often not possible due to demands on police resources and time. In addition, the police frequently have to deal with incidents where there are multiple witnesses at the scene, such as during natural disasters, mass accidents, or terrorist attacks. It is not always possible for the police to interview all witnesses simultaneously, and often witnesses are not interviewed for several days, weeks, or even months after the incident has happened. During these delays, for- getting may occur and memory is also more susceptible to misleading information. The SAI facilitates police practice, since it can be administered promptly at the scene of an incident. It is totally self-explanatory and can be completed by witnesses in their own time (Gabbert et al. 2009).

The most recent version of SAI comes in the form of a booklet comprised of seven sections with information, instructions, and cues that aim to facilitate witness recall and are essentially based on the underlying memory principles of the CI (Hope et al. 2011). Section A includes mental context reinstatement instructions which encourage the witness to place themselves back to the point in time when the incident has taken place and to think about the event in as much detail as possible before writing down the memories. Thereafter, witnesses are asked to “report everything” that they remember. The next section focuses on eliciting a detailed person description by asking the witnesses several questions about the perpetrators appearance (e.g., hair, build, distinguishing features). Section C encourages witnesses to draw a sketch of the crime scene to generate important spatial information, which might be especially important during road traffic incidents, and to get additional information about possible escape routes of the perpetrators. In Section D, witnesses are instructed to describe any other people who were present at the crime scene, also when they were not directly involved to identify other witnesses. Section E requests information about any present vehicles and Section F about general conditions which may have impacted the visibility of the event, such as weather, obstructions, and time of day. The final Section G allows witnesses to report any additional information not previously mentioned or covered in any of the prior sections (Hope et al. 2011).

Early laboratory studies revealed that participants provided considerably more accurate information about a to-be-remembered event when interviewed with the SAI compared to free-recall instructions. The amount of correct information recalled was similar to that elicited with a CI. Furthermore, participants who received the SAI directly after they witnessed the event remembered more information about it during a 1-week later free-recall test than individuals who had not completed the SAI (Gabbert et al. 2009).

In 2009, field trials of the SAI started in England and Wales initiated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Investigative Interview Committee. The main aims of the field trials were to examine the type of information provided by witnesses and the nature of event, to get end-user evaluations, and to identify situations in which the SAI is most useful (Hope et al. 2011). Trials have also focused on police officers’ opinions about the efficiency of the SAI. It was found that the majority of officers experience the SAI as user-friendly and time saving. However, some officers raised concerns such as that it is only suitable for cooperative witnesses, that vital information may be missed, and that officers may use it incorrectly. The Greater Manchester Police in the UK is now providing officers with a SAI training package to inform them about its usage and theoretical underpinnings (Hope et al. 2011).

Policy Issues

Given the extensive research on investigative interviewing, predominantly on the CI technique, and the light it has shed on faulty interviewing practices, the question can be asked whether police interviews have improved in the 20 years since the CI was first introduced. One of the main issues that arises from the in-depth analysis of the research literature on investigative interviewing is that, despite numerous psychological studies, police officers are reluctant to use the complete enhanced version of the CI (Kebbell et al. 1999). In a recent analysis of police interview techniques, Fisher and Schreiber (2007) requested 23 detectives in Miami experienced in investigations of robbery, sexual assault, homicide, and internal affairs to tape-record their witness interviews. Analysis of these interviews revealed interviewing behaviors that were similar to those identified 20 years earlier. This was particularly disappointing in view of the scientific progress made in the field and the efforts to disseminate findings to practitioners and implement training programs. The evidence from the UK suggests that many police officers are inadequately trained in investigative interviewing techniques. In an evaluation of 75 police interviews, for example, Clarke and Milne (2001) found no evidence of the CI procedure having been used at all in the vast majority (83 %) of interviews. As a result of this, there have been changes in the way training is delivered in the UK. Most police officers are subject to a tiered approach with novice police officers receiving basic training in interview skills (the Tier 1 procedure), and as they progress through their career, they can acquire additional interview tiers. Advanced courses build on skills acquired in earlier courses, and there are courses directed at specialist interviewers such as police working in child protection. The tiered model encourages continuous learning about and acquisition of advanced knowledge on the best interviewing practices and recent discoveries in cognitive psychology. Furthermore, it ensures that police officers will only learn about interviewing techniques which are most relevant to their current role and responsibilities in their career. It is essential to continuously monitor and assess police interviewing practice and training to ensure best practice.

Another controversial issue with respect to investigative interviewing is whether interviews should be electronically recorded and be made available to the courts and experts. In some parts of the UK (England and Wales), interviews with witnesses are electronically recorded, whereas in other countries (Scotland), interviews with witnesses are based on hand-written notes taken during the interview. This may be problematic as we know from research that interviewers’ recollections regarding the content and structure of interviews are far from being infallible. Lamb et al. (2000) compared 20 audiotaped forensic interviews of sexual abuse cases with the verbatim notes made by interviewers during the course of the interview. It was revealed that interviewers often failed to report in their notes many of the details provided by the children and many of the utterances they used to elicit them. Twenty-five percent of forensically relevant information was not provided in the notes. In addition, interviewers often failed to accurately recall the question format utilized and stated that they used more often open-ended questions than they actually did. The failure to accurately recall when and which questions are asked during an interview can have severe consequences especially in forensic settings, such as undermining the credibility of a child witness during a sexual abuse case. It is crucial to use objective and accurate methods of recording, such as video recordings, which do not affect adversely the credibility of the evidence.

Future Research Directions

It should be noted that the NICHD, the CI, and the SAI all focus on interviewing cooperative witnesses. Few studies have investigated the effectiveness of these protocols with uncooperative witnesses, such as suspects. Suspect interviewing plays an important part during criminal investigations, particularly to gather further information or evidence about additional perpetrators and other related criminal activities. In the USA, suspect interviewing is very confrontational, and the most frequently taught and used interview technique is the so-called Reid technique, which focuses on identifying truth tellers and liars and eliciting a confession (Kassin et al. 2010). In contrast, suspect interviewing in the UK changed dramatically in the early 1990s from “obtaining a confession” to “information gathering” (Bull and Milne 2004). Since then, recommendations on suspect interviewing were published and a new interviewer training program was developed which standardized for the first-time interview practices in England and Wales (Bull and Milne 2004). The aim of the new guidelines and the training program was to make suspect interviewing more transparent and fair. The training constitutes of a five-part model called PEACE, which stands for planning/preparation, engaging and explaining to the suspect, account from the suspect, closure, and evaluation (Bull and Milne 2004). Although the PEACE model has been successfully implemented in current UK police practice, there remain unanswered questions. O’Mahony, Milne, and Grant (2012) raise the issue that there is no guidance available on how to best interview vulnerable suspects, such as suspects with an intellectual disability. This is an important topic, given the high prevalence rate of people with intellectual disabilities in the UK (Emerson et al. 2001) and their increased risk of getting involved in criminal activities, due to living in underprivileged neighborhoods with high crime rates and/or being more likely exploited by criminals to assist in illegal activities because of their low understanding of their actual involvement in a crime and their heightened need to be accepted by other people (Davis 2005). The majority of research in the area of offenders with intellectual disabilities has looked at assessment and treatment of sexual offenders (see the book by Craig et al. (2010)). Empirical research on investigative interviewing has focused merely on interviewing vulnerable victims and witnesses (Milne 1999) and has neglected somewhat the research question of how to best interview vulnerable suspects.

Another area which needs to be researched in more depth is the impact of trauma on witness memory and how the different interview protocols work best with traumatized witnesses. For example, should the SAI be administered at the scene of a crime to a traumatized witness, or should witnesses and victims first be assessed and allowed to recover before they are subjected to an interview? Would a face-to-face CI meet the special needs of these types of witnesses better than the SAI? Until now psychological research has focused predominantly on the impact of emotional events on people’s memory, without considering the impact of the applied interview technique (Reisberg and Hertel 2004). Some evidence suggests that highly emotional or distinctive events are remembered well and very vividly. Researchers call these memories flashbulb memories, because of their intense and detailed nature (Brown and Kulik 1977). Many people report, for example, to have remembered the death of Princess Diana (1997) or the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (2001) as if they had happened yesterday. People are also often very confident in the accuracy of such flashbulb memories. However, a detailed and confidently held memory does not necessarily need to be accurate as demonstrated by Neisser and Harsch (1992). They interviewed people after the 1986 Challenger space-shuttle disaster about their whereabouts when the incident had happened and when and where they first heard about it. Three years later, the same people were reinterviewed. People still reported detailed and highly confident memories; however, these memories were often prone to errors and sometimes were even completely different from their first recollections. Findings from laboratory studies suggest that arousal can aid as well as impair memory for an experienced event and that it strongly depends on the type of detail one is trying to recall. Central details, such as details associated with the gist of the event or which are spatially central, are usually remembered very accurately, whereas peripheral details, which are plot irrelevant, are often remembered poorly (Reisberg and Hertel 2004). Thus, witnesses of and victims to traumatic events can provide accurate accounts; however, they may be less complete. The empirical and practical question of which interview technique is best for interviewing traumatized witnesses and victims and the most appropriate time at which to interview them remains as yet unclear.

Conclusions

The knowledge acquired through psychological research has helped to develop interviewing techniques which are based on well-established psychological theories regarding memory, communication, and social interaction. The UK, by basing its national investigative interviewing strategy on psychological theory and research, provides a good model for other jurisdictions to follow; however, this does not mean that enough has been achieved. Enhancing the efficacy of investigative interviews is a continual process, and there is always room for improvement, especially at a time where police forces face major cuts in their resources and need to consider alternative more time-efficient methods to interview eyewitnesses. The SAI provides one way in which police can save time and resources and the available research suggests it might be a practical alternative to the face-to-face interview. Of course, there will be situations where the police will need to assess the suitability of a witness for an investigative interview such as the CI particularly if the witness is traumatized or intellectually challenged. This is an area where further research is needed and specialist interview teams need to consider how best to deal with vulnerable witnesses or those with special needs. Another area where interviewing practices need further consideration is in dealing with offenders, particularly those with intellectual disabilities. It may be that existing protocols can be modified to meet the needs of specific groups. Practitioners working in the Criminal Justice System and academics need to work together to ensure that investigative interviewing follows best practices and that miscarriages of justice based on faulty interviewing practices are minimized.

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