The Role of Witnesses

Memory – Witness Memory and the Cognitive Interview

In this course, Prof. Becky Milne (University of Portsmouth) explores witness memory and the cognitive interview, a forensic interviewing technique used by police officers to improve the quantity and quality of information gathered from witnesses, victims and suspects. In the first lecture, we think about the role of witnesses in a police investigation before moving on. In the second lecture, we look at witness memory more specifically. In the third lecture, we look at the cognitive interview as an important aspect of police training in the UK. Next, we explore what the cognitive interview is and how it works. In the fifth and final lecture, we conclude the course by looking at how the cognitive interview is applied in real life scenarios.

The Role of Witnesses

In this lecture, we think about the role of witnesses in a police investigation, focusing in particular on: (i) the two main investigative questions ‘What happened?’ ‘Who did it?'; (ii) how psychologists can support police in answering these questions by helping them gather more reliable information from witnesses; (iii) the importance of establishing a ‘contamination timeline’ stretching from the scene of the crime to the courtroom, to take account of the different points at which a witness’s memory of an event may have become distorted through post-event discussion or questioning; (iv) why the gathering of reliable information from witnesses is so crucial to maintaining a just legal process.