Today on a Dutch website by Gerard Overmars I found an article about interview techniques I thought might interest the judges among my readers.
Overmars in an experienced investigator in both law enforcement and private sector. Specialist in interviewing techniques. He is interested in new interviewing methods and developing practical guidelines for interviews in the private sector (investigative interviewing). Because of these interests he started 'Verhoren van .......' for only one reason: sharing experiences.
Well, I think we can learn a lot to improve our interview techniques the hearing room, and I applaud his "free flow of information' policy.
He talks about a seminar he took in Dundee and the lecturer who explained the principles of 'Cognitive Interview'; Dr. Becky Milner, Principal Lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth,
In this article Dr Becky Milne explains the technique of cognitive interviewing:
The cognitive interview was developed for the interviewing of cooperative interviewees, be they witness, victim or suspect, and basically it’s a collection of tools, on a toolbelt that are trained to the police, and the tools on the toolbelt that are trained to the police all help to aid certain areas of memory. Now originally the cognitive interview consisted of four primary techniques.
FIRST
The first technique is a simple technique. It’s simply telling the witness to tell me absolutely everything they can remember; don’t leave anything out, don’t edit anything. The reason why this simple technique basically to tell someone tell me everything is that we know that even the most cooperative adult does not spontaneously report everything that they remember. When they remember something, when they retrieve it, they make a decision, do I tell the person I’m talking to or do I withhold it? And so this simple technique of tell me everything stops witnesses and victims and suspects withholding information.
Now people may withhold information for a large number of reasons. One reason is they think well it’s not important information. But the general public do not know what’s of importance to the police. They might withhold information because they’re not sure about it, oh did I see that or did I not? And there’s lots of research looking at the correlation between how confident someone is and actually how accurate they are, and indeed confidence is instead a personality measure rather than an accuracy measure. Someone may withhold something because they feel well the police already know, they’ve interviewed other people, there was CCTV there.
SECOND
The second technique is what we call context reinstatement. This gets witnesses to think back in their mind’s eye the environment of where the crime actually occurred. It’s very much like you know if you’ve lost a set of keys or a pair of glasses and you’re trying to think in your head, you create an image of where you thought you last saw them, whether it’s your place of work, your home, and you try and think where was it, and you visualise that place in your head and you think of where the keys were. Very similar, what we try and do is we get our witness or victim to either close their eyes or look at the floor, we don’t want them to be too distracted, and we get them to create an image in their mind’s eye of that scene, and it’s quite easy to do, all we get them is to start thinking about things and we say some basic phrases.
We say for example I want you to close your eyes, get a clear, clear picture of the scene in your head. Think about everything that you can remember in that scene, get a clear picture of it. Think about the layout of the scene. Think about all the objects that were there. Think about all the colours that you can remember at the scene. Think about all the sounds that you remember hearing. Get a clear picture of all the people that were there, and then in your own time and in your own pace tell me everything you can remember about that scene. And that’s getting people to slow down, to think about the scene in their head and to create that image in their mind’s eye, and we know through research that is very helpful for memory retrieval.
THIRD
Another of the basic four cognitive techniques is called the reverse the temporal order of recall technique, and this basically gets people to think about the event in a variety of ways. So we get people to either go backwards from the last thing they remember to the first or from the most memorable aspect of the event and going backwards and forwards in time.
Now the reason why this is important is that people from a very young age develop scripts in memory, and the primary reason we do that is because we dislike the unknown. Everyone has been in a situation where you’re going somewhere new, it may be a new place, a new restaurant, and you’re a bit unsure of what it’s like, so you ring someone up who’s been there before, what’s it like, how smart is smart, what are you wearing – that’s a typical fear of the unknown. And because we all fear the unknown, from the age of about three we start developing rules and regulations in life; what typically happens in a restaurant, what typically happens in a dentist. So people develop these scripts.
The reverse order recall instruction is also very useful for trying to detect deceit. Of course, unfortunately, within investigations people do lie, and there has been a whole body of research looking at methods of detecting deceit. Now when people lie they rehearse their lies and typically people will rehearse their lies in a chronological order, and therefore if we get someone to go backwards in time, this therefore really is tricky for someone who is lying, and so research by someone called Aldert Vrij, he has examined the use of the cognitive interview with people who are lying, and we find that it’s very difficult for people to lie when the cognitive interview is used in an interview scenario.
FOURTH
The final technique, the fourth one of the original four, is something called the changed perspectives technique. Now people again are also very egocentric, we’re very me-me-me-me-me, which is fine when you get a witness maybe of a very traumatic event to recall an event. You know, we have weapon focus effect and people are there, you know, going god this happened, that happened, and so of course understandably they report it from their own viewpoint, their own perspective. This technique, which is often used later on in the interview, gets people to think about the event from another perspective, so for someone else who was at the scene.
For example, you get people to think about the event in the shoes of, it’s almost like they’re in a spotlight, and you get that person to isolate that particular memory about the person with the gun, like they’re in a spotlight on the stage, and we just want them to report everything they remember about that particular individual, and this gets people to start thinking about putting themselves in the shoes of another individual at the scene, maybe even the perpetrator, although it does depend on how traumatising and the type of event.
ALL FOUR
Those four techniques form the original cognitive interview, which were originally back in the early Eighties given to police officers to use as and when they wished within their normal interviewing. However research examining how police typically interview in the field was quite shocked that the police did not conform to what we would say is good appropriate interviewing to get maximum quantity and quality of information from people. We know through research the best way to interview someone is to start with what we say an open question, tell me everything, we get a free recall for someone, and what that means is someone can recall in a free manner, recall in any way they want. And they basically recall as much as they want and they have their own time. When that free recall has finished then what we do is we break that free recall up and we ask questions about topic areas in the order the person has remembered it, again using open questions.
QUESTIONLESS INTERVIEW?
It seems to go against common sense but to get information you do not need to ask lots and lots of questions, because every time you ask a question you are stopping that interviewee speaking, so really what you’re trying to do is basically get information from someone without asking as many questions, well, hold on, what you’ve got to do is get information from someone with asking the fewest questions possible. What we often say is the thing, the interview that a police officer is striving to achieve is the questionless interview, because every time a police officer asks a question there is the possibility of contamination of human memory, and so what we’re striving for when we’re training and teaching police officers is almost to try and get as much information as possible without contaminating memory, and so therefore that sort of golden ball in the sky that they are trying to achieve is the questionless interview. It doesn’t exist, it would be almost impossible to have a questionless interview; however if that’s what they’re looking for every time a police officer asks a question, they’re really trying to concentrate off what is the value of that question.
One of our conversational rules is something called the maxim of quantity. We learn from a very young age that speaking in lots of detail is very rude. And so, for example, I have a five year old son, and at the moment we’re teaching him turn taking. It’s mummy and daddy’s turn at the moment to speak, it’s your turn next. And so we learn from a very young age that giving lots of detail is not needed in normal conversation. However in a police interview that’s what we’re asking witnesses to do, give us detail. So if I’m asking a forty year old who has learned from the age of three that detail’s not required, we’re getting people to break normal conversational rules. We’re also getting the interviewers to break normal conversational rules.
I've left parts out, as to give you a change to read the whole post before your morning coffee got too cold, but for the really interested, here is the link to the whole article: Cognitive interviewing: Becky Milne
Overmars in an experienced investigator in both law enforcement and private sector. Specialist in interviewing techniques. He is interested in new interviewing methods and developing practical guidelines for interviews in the private sector (investigative interviewing). Because of these interests he started 'Verhoren van .......' for only one reason: sharing experiences.
Well, I think we can learn a lot to improve our interview techniques the hearing room, and I applaud his "free flow of information' policy.
He talks about a seminar he took in Dundee and the lecturer who explained the principles of 'Cognitive Interview'; Dr. Becky Milner, Principal Lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth,
In this article Dr Becky Milne explains the technique of cognitive interviewing:
The cognitive interview was developed for the interviewing of cooperative interviewees, be they witness, victim or suspect, and basically it’s a collection of tools, on a toolbelt that are trained to the police, and the tools on the toolbelt that are trained to the police all help to aid certain areas of memory. Now originally the cognitive interview consisted of four primary techniques.
FIRST
The first technique is a simple technique. It’s simply telling the witness to tell me absolutely everything they can remember; don’t leave anything out, don’t edit anything. The reason why this simple technique basically to tell someone tell me everything is that we know that even the most cooperative adult does not spontaneously report everything that they remember. When they remember something, when they retrieve it, they make a decision, do I tell the person I’m talking to or do I withhold it? And so this simple technique of tell me everything stops witnesses and victims and suspects withholding information.
Now people may withhold information for a large number of reasons. One reason is they think well it’s not important information. But the general public do not know what’s of importance to the police. They might withhold information because they’re not sure about it, oh did I see that or did I not? And there’s lots of research looking at the correlation between how confident someone is and actually how accurate they are, and indeed confidence is instead a personality measure rather than an accuracy measure. Someone may withhold something because they feel well the police already know, they’ve interviewed other people, there was CCTV there.
SECOND
The second technique is what we call context reinstatement. This gets witnesses to think back in their mind’s eye the environment of where the crime actually occurred. It’s very much like you know if you’ve lost a set of keys or a pair of glasses and you’re trying to think in your head, you create an image of where you thought you last saw them, whether it’s your place of work, your home, and you try and think where was it, and you visualise that place in your head and you think of where the keys were. Very similar, what we try and do is we get our witness or victim to either close their eyes or look at the floor, we don’t want them to be too distracted, and we get them to create an image in their mind’s eye of that scene, and it’s quite easy to do, all we get them is to start thinking about things and we say some basic phrases.
We say for example I want you to close your eyes, get a clear, clear picture of the scene in your head. Think about everything that you can remember in that scene, get a clear picture of it. Think about the layout of the scene. Think about all the objects that were there. Think about all the colours that you can remember at the scene. Think about all the sounds that you remember hearing. Get a clear picture of all the people that were there, and then in your own time and in your own pace tell me everything you can remember about that scene. And that’s getting people to slow down, to think about the scene in their head and to create that image in their mind’s eye, and we know through research that is very helpful for memory retrieval.
THIRD
Another of the basic four cognitive techniques is called the reverse the temporal order of recall technique, and this basically gets people to think about the event in a variety of ways. So we get people to either go backwards from the last thing they remember to the first or from the most memorable aspect of the event and going backwards and forwards in time.
Now the reason why this is important is that people from a very young age develop scripts in memory, and the primary reason we do that is because we dislike the unknown. Everyone has been in a situation where you’re going somewhere new, it may be a new place, a new restaurant, and you’re a bit unsure of what it’s like, so you ring someone up who’s been there before, what’s it like, how smart is smart, what are you wearing – that’s a typical fear of the unknown. And because we all fear the unknown, from the age of about three we start developing rules and regulations in life; what typically happens in a restaurant, what typically happens in a dentist. So people develop these scripts.
The reverse order recall instruction is also very useful for trying to detect deceit. Of course, unfortunately, within investigations people do lie, and there has been a whole body of research looking at methods of detecting deceit. Now when people lie they rehearse their lies and typically people will rehearse their lies in a chronological order, and therefore if we get someone to go backwards in time, this therefore really is tricky for someone who is lying, and so research by someone called Aldert Vrij, he has examined the use of the cognitive interview with people who are lying, and we find that it’s very difficult for people to lie when the cognitive interview is used in an interview scenario.
FOURTH
The final technique, the fourth one of the original four, is something called the changed perspectives technique. Now people again are also very egocentric, we’re very me-me-me-me-me, which is fine when you get a witness maybe of a very traumatic event to recall an event. You know, we have weapon focus effect and people are there, you know, going god this happened, that happened, and so of course understandably they report it from their own viewpoint, their own perspective. This technique, which is often used later on in the interview, gets people to think about the event from another perspective, so for someone else who was at the scene.
For example, you get people to think about the event in the shoes of, it’s almost like they’re in a spotlight, and you get that person to isolate that particular memory about the person with the gun, like they’re in a spotlight on the stage, and we just want them to report everything they remember about that particular individual, and this gets people to start thinking about putting themselves in the shoes of another individual at the scene, maybe even the perpetrator, although it does depend on how traumatising and the type of event.
ALL FOUR
Those four techniques form the original cognitive interview, which were originally back in the early Eighties given to police officers to use as and when they wished within their normal interviewing. However research examining how police typically interview in the field was quite shocked that the police did not conform to what we would say is good appropriate interviewing to get maximum quantity and quality of information from people. We know through research the best way to interview someone is to start with what we say an open question, tell me everything, we get a free recall for someone, and what that means is someone can recall in a free manner, recall in any way they want. And they basically recall as much as they want and they have their own time. When that free recall has finished then what we do is we break that free recall up and we ask questions about topic areas in the order the person has remembered it, again using open questions.
QUESTIONLESS INTERVIEW?
It seems to go against common sense but to get information you do not need to ask lots and lots of questions, because every time you ask a question you are stopping that interviewee speaking, so really what you’re trying to do is basically get information from someone without asking as many questions, well, hold on, what you’ve got to do is get information from someone with asking the fewest questions possible. What we often say is the thing, the interview that a police officer is striving to achieve is the questionless interview, because every time a police officer asks a question there is the possibility of contamination of human memory, and so what we’re striving for when we’re training and teaching police officers is almost to try and get as much information as possible without contaminating memory, and so therefore that sort of golden ball in the sky that they are trying to achieve is the questionless interview. It doesn’t exist, it would be almost impossible to have a questionless interview; however if that’s what they’re looking for every time a police officer asks a question, they’re really trying to concentrate off what is the value of that question.
One of our conversational rules is something called the maxim of quantity. We learn from a very young age that speaking in lots of detail is very rude. And so, for example, I have a five year old son, and at the moment we’re teaching him turn taking. It’s mummy and daddy’s turn at the moment to speak, it’s your turn next. And so we learn from a very young age that giving lots of detail is not needed in normal conversation. However in a police interview that’s what we’re asking witnesses to do, give us detail. So if I’m asking a forty year old who has learned from the age of three that detail’s not required, we’re getting people to break normal conversational rules. We’re also getting the interviewers to break normal conversational rules.
I've left parts out, as to give you a change to read the whole post before your morning coffee got too cold, but for the really interested, here is the link to the whole article: Cognitive interviewing: Becky Milne
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