The Cognitive Interview for Eyewitnesses with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. The cognitive interview for witnesses with autism spectrum disorder Eyewitness evidence is central to the criminal justice system. In 2007, 1.78 million UK offenders were found guilty or cautioned (UK Ministry of Justice, UK, 2008) and 87% of police officers indicated that eyewitnesses usually or always provided major investigative leads (Kebbell & Milne, 1998). Inaccurate or incomplete testimony can lead to wrongful conviction or acquittal (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1996) and so reliable interviewing techniques are imperative in eliciting the most detailed yet accurate reports from witnesses. The Cognitive Interview (CI) is now one of the most widely used and accepted forms of interviewing in both the US and the UK (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992;Geiselman, 1984), and is currently taught to all police recruits in the UK (Dando & Milne, 2009). The CI has been shown to elicit detailed, yet accurate, reports from adult witnesses (Davis, McMahon & Greenwood, 2005;Kohnken, Milne, Memon & Bull, 1999), children (Geiselman & Padilla, 1988;Memon, Wark, Bull & Koehnken, 1997), older witnesses (Wright & Holliday, 2007b) and witnesses with learning disabilities (referred to in the US as mental retardation) (Milne, Clare & Bull, 1999 The Cognitive Interview (CI) is based on two basic principles of how memory typically operates; that retrieval of an event will be enhanced if the context experienced at recall matches that experienced during encoding (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992;Roediger, Weldon, Challis, & Craik, 1989; Tulving & Thompson, 1973), and that memories are stored as interconnected nodes that provide multiple retrieval routes (Tulving, 1974). On the basis of these principles the CI was the external (physical) and internal (subjective) states that they experienced during the witnessed event before freely reporting as many details of the event as possible. Permanent repository link:Recall of trivial or incomplete details is encouraged ('report all' instruction) since important facts may be elicited that co-occurred with seemingly unimportant events (Geiselman, Fisher, Mackinnon, & Holland, 1986). CR is followed by QU in whichwitnesses are asked open-ended questions based on what they said during their first free-recall attempt. Further details are elicited by asking witnesses to summon and describe mental images of the event, for example focusing on the best image they have of the victim in order to describe their clothing. During CO witnesses are then asked to recall the events in a different order, for example starting with the last thing they witnessed and working backwards in detail until they report the first thing they witnessed. Finally, the witness is asked to recall the event from a different perspective (CP), for example from the perspective of another person or imagining they were positioned in a different location (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). All four of these mnemonic strategies elicit more detai...

Recall of a live and personally experienced eyewitness event by adults with autism spectrum disorder

“…As mentioned in the introduction, despite the fact that all previous studies used homogeneous samples of high-functioning adults with ASD, their findings regarding both the completeness and accuracy of eyewitness testimony to date are mixed. Our findings of similar levels of completeness of the reports of witnesses with RUNNING HEAD: Experienced eyewitness events in ASD 21 ASD to their typical counterparts are consistent with some existing studies (e.g., Maras & Bowler, 2010; but inconsistent with others (e.g., Bruck et al, 2007;Maras & Bowler, 2011;McCrory et al, 2007). It could be concluded from the present findings that individuals with ASD recall more details if the event is salient, live and personally participated in, but given the inconsistent findings previously reported, future work is needed to clarify and confirm this interpretation.…”

“…It could be concluded from the present findings that individuals with ASD recall more details if the event is salient, live and personally participated in, but given the inconsistent findings previously reported, future work is needed to clarify and confirm this interpretation. Similarly, the same might be said for errors, where again our findings add to a mixed picture, with more errors reported by some studies (Maras & Bowler, 2011;, but not others (Bruck et al, 2007;Maras & Bowler, 2010;McCrory et al, 2007). That the questioning phase elicited more errors than the FR phase for both groups replicates and extends to witnesses with ASD the finding of the majority of existing studies that show this effect with typical individuals.…”

“…Both groups showed a self-enactment effect across both interview phases, recalling more actions that they had performed themselves than actions that the experimenter had performed. However, the ASD group were more likely than their typical comparisons to confuse the source of self- , and some report they make more errors or are less accurate (Maras & Bowler, 2011, but see Bruck et al, 2007Maras & Bowler, 2010, McCrory et al, 2007North et al, 2008).…”

“…Both groups showed a self-enactment effect across both interview phases, recalling more actions that they had performed themselves than actions that the experimenter had performed. However, the ASD group were more likely than their typical comparisons to confuse the source of self- , and some report they make more errors or are less accurate (Maras & Bowler, 2011, but see Bruck et al, 2007Maras & Bowler, 2010, McCrory et al, 2007North et al, 2008).Two studies to date have explored eyewitness testimony by children with ASD using a live event, although the event in these was passively observed rather than enacted. McCrory et al (2007) used a live classroom event and reported that whilst children with ASD freely recalled around a third less information than typically developing children did, they were no less accurate with regards to the proportion of errors or incorrect details that they reported.…”

“…errors or are less accurate (Maras & Bowler, 2011, but see Bruck et al, 2007;Maras & Bowler, 2010, McCrory et al, 2007North et al, 2008).…”