📄 Extracted Text (6,055 words)
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 30, ISSUE 3, 2012/1
THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEW FOR SUSPECTS (CIS)
R. Edward Geiselman. Ph.D.
The investigative interview protocol known as the cognitive interview (CI) was modifiedfor use with
suspects to maximize the opportunity to detect deception. The CIfor suspects (as) seeks to generate a
large amount of information front a suspect while reserving any challenge to the subject's story until late
in the interview. The as also contains two techniques for requesting information from the subject in an
unexpected manner: making a drawing/sketch and re-telling the story in reverse chronological order.
Trained interviewers conducted the CIS with participants who were instructed to describe a recent auto-
biographical event or a completely fabricated event. The interviewers rated the likelihood of the partici-
pant's truthfulness at each ofsix stages of the CIS protocol. The results showed that the interviewers were
only slightly better than chance at assessing deception following the narrative stage, but increased accu-
racy systematically throughout the remainder of the CIS. This study provides an initial demonstration of
the potential of the CISfor assessing the likelihood ofdeception during investigative interviews.
Information is the lifeblood of investigations and it is the ability of investigators to obtain useful and
accurate information from witnesses that is most crucial. Yet full and accurate memory recall is difficult to
achieve. The Cognitive Interview (CI) technique (1, 2) is a systematic approach to interviewing witnesses
toward increasing the amount of relevant information obtained without compromising the rate of accuracy
(3). The CI is based on scientifically derived principles of memory and communication theory as well as
extensive analyses of law-enforcement interviews. The CI has been found in scientific studies to produce
significantly more information than standard question and answer type interviews.
The CI as an information-gathering technique has been tested in approximately 100 laboratory tests,
most of which were conducted in the United States, England, Germany or Australia. In these studies, vol-
unteer witnesses (usually college students) observed either a live, innocuous event or a videotape of a
simulated crime. Shortly thereafter (ranging from a few hours to several days), the witnesses were inter-
viewed by a trained researcher—or in some cases by experienced police officers—who conducted either a
CI or a control interview. The control interview was modeled after a typical police interview or after a
generally accepted interview protocol such as the UK Memorandum of Good Practice. Across these stud-
ies, the CI typically elicited between 25%-40% more correct statements than did the control interview.
The effect was extremely reliable: Of the 55 experiments examined in a meta-analysis conducted in 1999
(4), 53 experiments found that the CI elicited more information than did the comparison interview (medi-
an increase = 34%). Equally important, accuracy was just as high in the CI interviews as in the compari-
son interviews. A second meta-analysis with a larger sample of studies produced similar results in 2010
(5). The CI has been taught and adopted by several policing agencies and allied investigative agencies
worldwide (2). Those agencies include: FBI, NTSB, Department of Homeland Security, Defense Intelli-
Copyright 2012 American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 30. Issue 3. The Journal is a publication of the American College
of Forensic Psychology, PO Box 130458, Carlsbad, California 92013.
EFTA01657001
2 / OBSELMAN: THE COONMVE INTERVIEW FOR SUSPECTS
gence Agency, UK Home Office, Calgary Police Service, Singapore Police Force, ICAC (Hong Kong), as
well as several mid-level police departments around the United States.
The general CI protocol was developed for use with victims and eyewitnesses but it also has been
used with success to interview suspects in some celebrated real-world cases known to the author by way
of reports from those directly involved. These success stories typically have involved either of two sce-
narios: a) the subject recalls and inadvertently reports details of the crime that only the perpetrator could
have known or b) the subject recalls details that contradict details he previously reported to the police but
that conform to an alternative police theory of the case. The CI is particularly suited for these kinds of
revelations because the CI is a witness-centered approach that relies on open-ended questions and narra-
tive responses. That is, the subject generates the information almost exclusively on his/her own rather
than responding to leading, close-ended questions from the investigator.
Recent research about investigative interviewing in my laboratory has focused on potential suspects.
This work was designed to examine a select group of indicators of deception and truthfulness from the
existing literature toward identifying the more reliable subset of these indicators. As a practical applica-
tion, McCormack et al. (6) reasoned that first responders might be able to rely on this limited set of indi-
cators, in addition to behavioral cues, to assess the likelihood of deception in conversations with persons
who have raised suspicion. In the research, participants were asked to generate narrative accounts of true
autobiographical events and narrative accounts of confabulated autobiographical events. Immediately be-
fore generating these stories, the participants were informed that they would need to tell each story in re-
verse chronological order, beginning with the end of the story and working backward in time. The re-
verse-order technique was taken from the basic CI protocol and was used in this study to increase the
cognitive load on the storyteller (7). Increasing cognitive load has been found to increase the likelihood
that reliable indicators of deception will emerge (6, 7). The contents of the tape-recorded stories told in
reverse order were examined for a select set of verbal and vocal indicators of deception and truthfulness.
It was found that the confabulated stories most often were limited in contextual details and/or interactions
with others, but contained spontaneous justifications for what was said. These bare-bones reports often
were spoken in sentence fragments with frequent stops and starts at an uneven rate of speech. Gaze aver-
sion, lip biting, and adaptors also were associated with the confabulated stories.
A series of follow-up studies (8) allowed for further quantification of true versus confabulated narra-
tives toward generating a refined set of indicators for assessing the likelihood of deception. The major
summary areas indicating deception were determined to be:
1) Something unnatural about the story —few details, ends abruptly, contradictions, lacking
chronology, vague or illogical story line, and awkward use of terms.
2) Exaggerated behavior—smiling, shrugging, grooming, and rationalizations.
EFTA01657002
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 30, ISSUE 3, 2012/3
3) Unusual eye movements or contact —blinking, squinting, exaggerated movements, and look-
ing down or around the room.
This triad of indicators, while only red-flags with limited diagnostic value, can be monitored through-
out an investigative interview but especially during stages where the cognitive load would be expected to
be greatest for the interviewee, such as during an unexpected request to tell the story backward or to draw
a diagram/sketch of the story. Changes from baseline observed during rapport development could indicate
deception.
Research has shown that even with some training, distinguishing truthful from deceptive oral narra-
tives and exchanges based on indicators alone is not an easy task, with accuracy often just above chance
(9). Interactive strategies for detecting possible deception have proven to be more reliable (10, 11). For
purposes of the present research, the general CI protocol was merged with reliable findings from the re-
search literature on detecting deception to produce the cognitive interview for suspects (CIS). The CIS
allows for a non-judgmental approach to interviewing subjects in situations where it is not yet clear
whether the subject will be honest or deceptive during the interview (12). The same principles that drive
the memory-enhancement and communications aspects of the CI for cooperative victims and witnesses
are at work in the CIS. The subject is induced to generate large amounts of information before any chal-
lenge is made. This allows for a greater opportunity to observe inconsistent statements as well as any ver-
bal, vocal, and behavioral signs of deception and changes from baseline (the rapport stage) should they
occur. This approach reduces the likelihood that the investigator will challenge the subject pm-maturely
based on any confirmatory bias (13). The CIS also employs two techniques for asking for information in
ways that are unanticipated by the subject, namely drawing/sketching the story and re-telling the story in
reverse chronological order. These elements of the CIS provide an opportunity to observe the subject's
performance under unexpected conditions and elevated levels of cognitive load.
The eight stages of the full CIS are as follows:
1. Rapport/Introduction. It is recommended that the interviewer should present him/herself as just
another person, rather than as a superior person of authority, and show an interest in the subject as an in-
dividual (1). The interviewer should create rapport with the subject using casual conversation in a non-
judgmental manner. This is to put the subject at ease such that the interview will be more productive. In
this manner, the subject may come to like and even trust the interviewer while talking about shared inter-
ests, real or not (14). As the subject begins to talk truthfully about neutral topics, it may become more dif-
ficult later on for the subject to tell the false story without showing signs of deception. Prisoners who con-
fessed during their police interviews reported that their interviewers had developed rapport with them
whereas a dominating approach was met with resistance (15). So, disarm a potentially deceptive subject
with a few minutes of conversation. In addition, the interviewer should observe the subject's general de-
meanor during this chat as a baseline. A change in demeanor later on could indicate deception.
EFTA01657003
4 / GEISELMAN: ME COONMVE INTERVIEW FOR SUSPECTS
2. Narrative. Research shows that the vast majority of persons put in a position of being deceptive
choose to offer only the highlights of their story or a bare bones account (6, 8, 16). The typical justifica-
tion for such an abbreviated narrative is that to be more elaborate would appear as an attempt to convince
the interviewer, or to "sell" the story (16). In contrast, the elements of the original CI leading up to the
request for the narrative raise the expectation that the subject will be detailed in the narrative. In fact, the
subject is instructed precisely to tell the story in as much detail as possible, and to take as much time as
needed to concentrate. The elements of the original CI leading up to the narrative include: transfer of con-
trol to the subject ("You were there, I was not, so I am relying on you for the information I need."); re-
quest for a detailed account; and reconstruction of the environmental and physical context that existed just
prior to the beginning of the event in question. More information provides a greater opportunity to pro-
duce conflicting details and/or details that are incriminating or known to be false. The interviewer should
use "extenders" and other prompts to keep the narrative going as long as possible ("Really... tell me more
about that.").
3. Drawing/Sketch. The interviewer's request for an illustration of the story from the narrative stage is
unexpected by the subject. Research shows that unexpected requests can trip up a liar (17, 18). The re-
quest for an illustration should be presented as a means to clarify the narrative for greater understanding
by the interviewer as well as to give the subject another opportunity to recall additional information. Look
for unusual difficulty in making the drawing/diagram as well as for inconsistencies and a lack of addition-
al elaboration—liars tend to have greater difficulty, exhibit more inconsistencies, and produce little, if
any, additional details compared with truthful subjects.
4. Follow-up, Open-Ended Questions. The follow-up, open-ended questions should be presented as
information-gathering rather than as confrontational to maintain the momentum toward generating more
information from the suspect. Liars typically answer these questions with minimal elaboration without
offering much that is new (19). Look for changes in body language from the rapport stage as well as for
the more reliable indicators of deception (leakage) as described above.
5. Reverse-Order Technique. When all of the scenes from the narrative have been exhausted with fol-
low-up questioning, introduce the reverse-order technique as another means for possibly jogging the sub-
ject's memory for additional details. Research shows that deceptive persons have unusual difficulty telling
their fabricated stories backward (6, 7). Recalling a story backward increases cognitive load, and the de-
ceptive subject's cognitive resources already are being strained to the limit to maintain the consistency of
the story. Because of the additional reduction in their cognitive resources, research shows that the more
reliable indicators of deception as described above are more likely to appear (leakage). Look for these
signs to be more apparent during the reverse-order task.
6. Challenge. At this point, the subject will be confronted about inconsistencies, incriminating state-
ments, and/or external incriminating evidence. None of these elements should be addressed prior to this
EFTA01657004
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 30, ISSUE 3, 201215
point in the interview (II). Consistent with the original CI, the interviewer should remain soft-spoken,
respectful, and use pauses effectively to maintain the focus on the subject. Given that rapport has been
developed and the interview has been conducted in an information-gathering style using "teamwork," the
interviewer should ask the subject to "help me explain this?' The confrontation should be conducted in a
"drip" (piece by piece) manner rather than in attempt to overwhelm the subject with all of the incriminat-
ing information at once (10). Research shows that the weakest evidence should be presented first. This
procedure increases the likelihood for additional inconsistent statements because it does not allow for a
comprehensive explanation from a liar at one time.
In response to a more direct challenge ("Is everything you have told me been the truth? I think you
have been lying to me this entire time."), research shows that most truthful subjects will give a firm denial
and then offer additional information in support of their truthfulness (8). In contrast, liars tend to deflect
an answer with responses such as, "I'm sorry you don't believe me" or "Why would I lie?" In sum, truth-
ful subjects tend to offer more information in response to a challenge whereas liars tend to offer little or
no additional credible information.
7. Review. The interview summary should be framed as in the CI for witnesses, as an opportunity for
the subject to correct any inaccuracies and to recall additional facts. With suspects, the interviewer should
change a non-incriminating element of the subject's story to see if the subject spontaneously corrects the
inaccuracy (20). Liars tend not to correct the inaccuracy, but rather quickly agree with the review, includ-
ing the changed element of the story, in an attempt to end the interview as soon as possible.
8. Closure. If the subject has appeared truthful, thank them for their cooperation. If the subject has
appeared deceptive, express that you feel disappointed and disrespected (exploiting the rapport stage). In
the latter case, it is worth an attempt to explain to the subject that it would be better for him/her to tell the
truth now rather than later.
The present experiment was designed to provide an initial evaluation of the first six stages of the CIS
and to serve as a demonstration of the potential of the CIS for assessing deception. College student re-
search assistants, trained in the CIS protocol, interviewed fellow students about particular life events. For
some of the interviews, the storyteller was truthful about the life event, whereas for other interviews the
storyteller was deceptive, fabricating the entire story. The trained interviewers were asked to judge the
truthfulness of each storyteller at six stages of the CIS protocol—rapport, narrative, drawing, follow-up
questions, reverse-order recall, and challenge. With this methodology, it was possible to assess the cumu-
lative contributions of the stages of the CIS for assessing deception. The final two stages of the full CIS
(review and closure) were not studied in this experiment.
EFTA01657005
6 / OBSELMAN: THE COONMVE INTERVIEW FOR SUSPECTS
METHOD
Participants
Twenty college and university students enrolled as undergraduates in Los Angeles County served as
subjects for the interviews. They volunteered in exchange for cash payment for two hours service. Their
average age was 193 years; 50% were female; and several ethnicities were represented (White, Hispanic,
Pacific Islander, African American), as well as persons of mixed heritage. Four additional participants
were compensated but were not included in the final data set because, contrary to instructions, they con-
fessed about their deception during their interviews.
The participants who served as the interviewers were six undergraduate students who served as re-
search assistants in exchange for cash payment. The interviewers were trained by the author to conduct
the interview protocols as described below. Their average age was 20.9 years; 50% were female; 50%
were White; 30% were Pacific Islanders; and 20% were of Middle-Eastern decent.
Materials and Preparation
The participants who served as the subjects for the interviews were required to select two life events
as the topics for their interviews, one that actually occurred and one that would be fabricated. This was
done at the initial meeting where a list of possible topics was provided and each participant was to select
one life event that occurred within the past three months and one life event that has never happened even
in part. The list of life events included: party, pet, trip, relationship, accident, purchase, anniversary, pro-
motion, award, concert, and wedding. Which of the two selected life events would be the focus of their
first interview was counterbalanced across participants.
The participants who served as the interviewers attended four training sessions conducted by the au-
thor. The instruction consisted of two hours of lecture about the CIS protocol and the summary indicators
of deception using video examples, followed by two one-hour role-play exercises where the participants
interviewed each other about one true event and one confabulated event. Feedback was provided on per-
formance. A two-hour summary meeting of the group with discussion concluded the training. Each stage
of the CIS was covered in the training in detail. A general template for asking the follow-up questions and
the challenge questions was provided and discussed. In addition to the open-ended questions for elabora-
tion of the narrative, the follow-up questions included questions about temporal context ("What else was
going on in your life at the time?"), other persons ("Tell me about all the people who were there."), and
emotional context ("How did this experience affect your life?"). In addition to questions about discrepan-
cies, the sequence of challenge questions was, "Is there anything you would like to add?' "Has everything
you have told me been the truth?" "I think you have been lying to me this entire time."
The interviewers were instructed to judge the storyteller in each interview on truthfulness at six stages
of the interview. The points in the interviews for these judgments were: immediately following building
EFTA01657006
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 30, ISSUE 3, 2012/7
rapport, upon completion of the narrative, after the drawing, after the follow-up questioning, after the re-
verse-order procedure, and after the confrontation. They were told that they could change their mind from
one stage to another. The interviewers also were required to rate their confidence in each of their judg-
ments on a 4-point scale, and to record the elapsed time at each stage as they made their rating by check-
ing a timer that was observable only to them.
Procedure
The interview subjects were told during the initial meeting that it would be the goal of the interview-
er, during each interview, to decide whether or not the life event had truly occurred. They were told that
their own goal was to tell about each life event in such a manner that the interviewer believed that it actu-
ally happened, whether in reality the event had actually happened or not. They were told to maintain this
ruse throughout the interview to the very end.
Each interviewer conducted 12 interviews over the course of the entire experiment with the restric-
tions that no interview subject could be interviewed more than once and 50% of the interviews were with
subjects who were being truthful. The interviewers were told that whether an interview subject in any
given interview was truthful was completely random and they were not informed as to the total number of
subject interviews. Upon completion of each interview, the interviewer was required to make notes con-
cerning their decision for that subject —to record their thinking about what made them decide that the sub-
ject was truthful or deceptive.
At the conclusion of the entire study, all six interviewers attended a joint debriefing session where
their observations about each stage of the CIS were discussed. Each interviewer reviewed the endnotes
from his/her 12 interviews during this session.
Design
The data matrix formed a 2 (truthful, deceptive) x 6 (stage of the interview) x 6 (interviewer) array.
The dependent variable was the truth rating as measured on an 8-point scale created by combining the
truthful-deceptive judgment and 4-point confidence rating at each stage of the interview. As structured,
the scale was anchored with "very likely truthful" (8) and "very likely deceptive" ( 1). In addition, qualita-
tive data were collected during a joint debriefing of the interviewers where each stage of the CIS was dis-
cussed.
RESULTS
The data from four additional participants who served as interview subjects were not included in the
analysis reported here because they confessed about their deception during the interviews. This was in
violation of their instructions to maintain their honesty throughout the interview to the end. Two of these
EFTA01657007
8 / OBSELMAN: ME COONMVE INTERVIEW FOR SUSPECTS
participants confessed during the reverse-order stage of the CIS while the other two participants confessed
during the challenge stage.
Table 1. Mean Truth Ratings (8-point scale): Interview Stage
Event Rapport Narrative Drawing Follow-up Reverse Challenge Mean
Os Order
True 5.34 5.17 5.17 5.49 7.17 7/0 6.01
False 4.84 4.17 3.34 2.84 1.49 1.49 3.03
The mean truth ratings are presented in Table 1 as a function of historical truth of the life event (true,
false) and stage of the interview. The 2 by 6 ANOVA produced a significant main effect of historical truth,
F (1, 5) = 19.36, p < .01, with the truth ratings being higher for the true stories than the false stories. The
interaction effect between historical truth and stage of the interview also was statistically significant, F (5,
5) = 23.38, p < .001, with the discrimination between true and false stories increasing systematically as
the interviews progressed. The mean duration in minutes of each stage of the interviews is presented in
Table 2 as a function of historical truth of the life event. The main effect of historical truth was not statis-
tically significant (39.04 versus 38.60), F ( 1, 5) = 2.23, p >.10, but the interaction effect between histori-
cal truth and stage of the interview was significant, F (5, 5) = 7.97, p < .05. The narrative and follow-up
questioning stages were each significantly longer for the true stories (p < .05), whereas the drawing and
reverse-order stages were significantly longer for the false stories (p < .05).
Inspection of Table 1 indicates that the interviewers were able to detect a difference between would-
be truthful versus would-be deceptive subjects after rapport development, but this difference was not reli-
able statistically (p > .05). Given that both of the mean ratings were numerically higher than the scale
midpoint (4.50), these interviewers exhibited a slight "truth bias" following the rapport stage.
Following the narratives, the interviewers were somewhat better than chance at discriminating true
from false stories but this difference also did not achieve statistical significance (p < .05). As predicted by
past research, the narratives offered by the interview subjects when they were being truthful were signifi-
cantly longer in duration than when they were being deceptive (7.97 min versus 5.76 min, p < .05).
Table 2. Mean Time Duration (Minutes): Interview Stage
Event Rapport Narrative Drawing Follow-up Reverse Challenge Total
Os Order
True 6.08 7.97 6.24 7.76 7.75 3.24 39.04
EFTA01657008
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 30, ISSUE 3, 2012/9
False 6.32 5.76 8.95 5.47 8.81 3.29 38.60
Following the drawings, the interviewers showed a modest increase in detection accuracy for the false
stories only, but the overall discrimination of true from false stories now was statistically reliable (p < .
05). The drawing task improved the detection of deception by revealing some time-consuming difficulties
(see Table 2) on the part of deceptive subjects. During the debriefing session at the conclusion of the
study, the interviewers reported unanimously that the subjects whom they thought were being deceptive
failed to include significant elements from their narratives in their drawings whereas truthful subjects
tended to add a few new details in their drawings. Deceptive subjects frequently needed to start over with
their drawings due to inconsistencies, and they tended to change and/or correct elements of their stories.
Overall then, deceptive subjects required more time to complete their illustrations even though it was the
truthful subjects who tended to add some new details during this stage.
Following the follow-up questioning, the discrimination of the true from false stories improved fur-
ther through modest increases in detection accuracy for both true and false stories (p < .05). As predicted
from past research, the follow-up questioning for the true stories was significantly longer than the follow-
up questioning for the false stories (see Table 2).
Following the use of the reverse-order technique, detection accuracy improved substantially for both
the true and false stories (p < .01). Thus, asking for the narrative in reverse order had significant diagnos-
tic value beyond simply asking follow-up questions. Requiring the subject to tell the story backward im-
proved the detection of deception by revealing time-consuming difficulties (see Table 2) on the part of
deceptive subjects. During the debriefing session at the conclusion of the study, the interviewers reported
that the subjects whom they thought were being deceptive tended to require prompts to keep them from
making significant leaps backward in time and reverting to forward-order recall ("What happened right
before that?").
Following the challenge stage, maximum discrimination accuracy was observed for both true and
false stories, but the additional gain was achieved through greater accuracy for true stories only (p < .05).
This is because, by the time of the challenge stage, most interviewers already had decided that most of the
deceptive subjects were in fact deceptive (see Table 1). During the debriefing session at the conclusion of
the study, all six interviewers agreed on the following differences between the subjects whom they be-
lieved to be truthful and the subjects they believed to be deceptive: When asked to clarify unresolved in-
consistencies in their stories, truthful subjects most often offered explanations that involved miscommu-
nication ("I wasn't clear before, let me explain...") whereas deceptive subjects most often offered expla-
nations that involved claims of faulty memory ("I was mistaken before, it was this way..."). When asked
if the subjects wanted to add anything, deceptive subjects tended to either say "No" quickly or they sim-
EFTA01657009
10 / CIEISELIAAN: THE COONMVE INTERVIEW FOR SUSPECTS
ply repeated elements from their narratives. In contrast, truthful subjects tended to either make elabora-
tions or at least hesitate to search memory before saying "No." When challenged directly by the inter-
viewers about having lied, deceptive subjects most often appeared unhappy and uncomfortable, and then
offered weak denials or deflected the direct challenge ("I'm sorry to hear that."). In contrast, the truthful
subjects were more likely to give a firm denial about not having lied. This difference was observed in the
previous studies (8).
Finally, all six interviewers agreed that each of the three summary indicators of deception from the
previous research (6, 8) were more apparent for the subjects whom they believed to be deceptive, espe-
cially during the drawing/sketch, reverse-order, and challenge stages: unnatural story elements (logic,
chronology), exaggerated behaviors (grooming), and unusual eye movements (searching).
DISCUSSION
The present experiment was designed to provide an initial evaluation of the CIS as a promising inter-
view protocol and to demonstrate the potential of the CIS for assessing the likelihood of deception. Con-
sistent with past experiments, the initial base rate for detecting deception was just over chance following
the narrative stage of the protocol. However, the remaining stages of the CIS resulted in a systematic in-
crease in the interviewers' ability to discriminate true from false stories. The drawing/sketch stage im-
proved judgment accuracy significantly for the false stories whereas the later challenge stage improved
judgment accuracy significantly for the true stories. The follow-up questioning and the reverse-order
stages improved judgment accuracy significantly for both the true and the false stories. Thus, maximum
discrimination accuracy was achieved following completion of all of the first six stages of the CIS proto-
col. The ultimate level of discrimination was highly significant.
These results demonstrate that maximum discrimination of deceptive from truthful subjects can be
achieved through a systematic application of several stages of good-practice interviewing procedures.
While most of these practices have been studied previously in isolation, the CIS protocol combines them
into a comprehensive set of procedures. As such, the CIS holds promise as an alternative methodology for
conducting investigative interviews with suspects. The CI was developed to assist willing victims and
witnesses of crime to maximize the amount of information obtained. When applied to suspects, the CI has
the potential to generate large amounts of information that can be used to increase the opportunity to de-
tect inconsistencies and other red-flag indicators. Deceptive persons must maintain the internal consisten-
cy of their false stories, and doing so requires cognitive resources. During the CIS, the interviewer further
increases the subject's cognitive load through unexpected requests for drawings and reverse-order recall.
With limited cognitive resources, the more reliable indicators of deception are likely to emerge as found
in previous research (6, 7, 17). For each of these reasons, the stages of the CIS allowed the interviewers in
the present experiment to systematically increase their discrimination of deceptive from truthful subjects.
EFTA01657010
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 30, ISSUE 3, 2012 / 11
As a word of caution, each element of the CIS, as well as the more reliable indicators of deception,
can provide the interviewer with "red flags" or "hot spots" only. Detection of any one indicator of decep-
tion during the interview should not be taken as sufficient evidence to conclude that the subject is being
deceptive. Instead, judgments about likely deception must be based on the overall pattern of performance
throughout the entire CIS protocol. Consistent with some past research using college students (8), the in-
terviewers in the present experiment tended to view most of the subjects initially as being likely to be
truthful. It is encouraging that the interviewers were able to systematically discriminate the truthful from
the deceptive subjects throughout the remaining stages of the protocol without retaining this "truth bias"
and without creating an opposite "deception bias."
The present experiment has a number of limitations that can be addressed in future studies of the CIS.
The interviewers and subjects were college students operating in a low-stakes environment. Skilled liars
under high-stakes conditions would conceivably be more difficult to detect, and truthful persons under
stress and/or sleep deprivation would conceivably exhibit some characteristics of liars. It is encouraging,
however, that college students without investigative experience could be trained in six hours to learn and
apply the CIS protocol with considerable accuracy. This outcome is especially encouraging given that the
interviewers were not supplied with any external information about the subjects' stories in advance of the
interviews. Such information conceivably could have been used to further facilitate the detection of de-
ception during the challenge stage. Given that the results were observed under these limiting conditions,
further research on the CIS certainly is warranted. A second limitation with the present experiment is that
the design did not include a comparison procedure such as the Reid confrontation interrogation technique
(21). Now that the CIS has shown promise as an alternative procedure, such comparisons in future exper-
iments are warranted as well. Finally, there was no attempt to gain confessions from the deceptive sub-
jects in this experiment (although four participants confessed anyway). Studies designed to gain confes-
sions from known perpetrators using the CIS remain to be conducted.
REFERENCES
1. Fisher RP, Geiselman RE: Memory-Enhancing Techniques in Investigative Interviewing: The Cognitive Inter-
view. Springfield, IL, C.C. Thomas, 1992
2. Geiselman RE, Fisher RP: Ten years of cognitive interviewing, in Intersections in Basic and Applied Memory
Research. Edited by Payne D, Conrad F. New York, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997; 291-310
3. Geiselman RE, Fisher RP, MacKinnon DP, Holland, HL: Eyewitness memory enhancement in the police inter-
view: cognitive retrieval mnemonics versus hypnosis. Journal of Applied Psychology 1985; 70:401.412
4. Koehnken G, Milne R, Memon A, Bull R: The cognitive interview: a meta-analysis. Psychology, Crime and
Law 1999; 5:3.27
5. Memon A, Meissner CA, Fraser J: The cognitive interview: a meta-analytic and study space analysis of the last
25 years. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 2010; 16:340-372
EFTA01657011
12 / OEISELMAN: THE COONMVE INTERVIEW FOR SUSPECTS
6. McCormack T, Ashkar A, Hunt A, Chang E, Silberkleit G, Geiselman RE: Indicators of deception in an oral
narrative: Which are more reliable? American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry 2009; 30:4:49-56
7. Vrij A, Fisher R, Mann S, Leal S: Increasing cognitive load in interviews to detect deceit, in International De-
velopments in Investigative Interviewing. Edited by Milne B, Savage S, Williamson T. Uffculme, UK, Willan
Publishing, 2009; 176.189
8. Geiselman RE, Elmgren S, Green C, Rystad I: Training laypersons to detect deception in oral narratives and
exchanges. American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry 2011; 32:2:43.61
9. Bond CF, Depaulo BM: Individual differences in judging deception: accuracy and bias. Psychological Bulletin
2008;134:477.492
10. Dando CJ, Bull R: Maximizing opportunities to detect verbal deception: training police officers to interview
tactically. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Criminal Profiling 2011; 8:189-202
11. Granhag PA, Stromwall LA, Hartwig M: The SUE technique: the way to interview to detect deception. Foren-
sicUpdate, 2007: 88:25-29
12. Kassin SM, Goldstein CI, Savitsky K: Behavioral confirmation in the interrogation room: on the dangers of
presuming guilt. Law and Human Behavior 2003; 87:187.203
13. Hill C, Memon A, McGeorge P: The role of confirmation bias in suspect interviews: a systematic evaluation.
Legal and Criminological Psychology 2008; 13:357.371
14. Fisher RP, Geiselman RE: The cognitive interview method of conducting police interviews: eliciting extensive
information and promoting therapeutic jurisprudence. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 2010;
33:321-328
15. Holmberg U, Christianson S: Murderers' and sexual offender? experiences of police interviews and their incli-
nation to admit or deny crimes. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 2002; 20:31.45
16. Colwell K, Hiscock-Anisman C, Memon A, Woods D, Michlik PM: Strategies of impression management
among deceivers and truth-tellers: how liars attempt to convince. American Journal of Forensic Psychology
2006; 24:2:31-38
17. Vrij A, Leal S, Granhag PA, Mann S, Fisher RP, Hillman J, Sperry K: Outsmarting the liars: the benefit of ask-
ing unanticipated questions. Law and Human Behavior 2009; 33:159.166
18. Vrij A, Leal S, Mann S, Warmelink L, Granhag P, Fisher R: Drawings as an innovative and successful lie detec-
tion tool. Applied Cognitive Psychology 2010; 24:587.594
19. Colwell K, Hiscock-Anisman CK, Memon A, Taylor L, Prewett J: Assessment Criteria Indicative of Deception
(ACID): an integrated system of investigative interviewing and detecting deception. Journal of Investigative
Psychology and Offender Profiling 2008; 4:167-180
20. Shafer JR, Navarro J: Advanced Interviewing Techniques (2nd Ed). Springfield, IL, Charles Thomas Publishers,
2012
21. Inbau FE, Reid JE, Buckley JP, Jayne BC: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, 4th Ed. Gaithersburg, Mary-
land, Aspen Publishers, 2001
EFTA01657012
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 30, ISSUE 3, 2012/13
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. R. Edward Geiselman is a Professor of Psychology at UCLA where he has served on the faculty
for 34 years. He has authored more than one hundred research papers and six books. Dr. Geiselman has
participated in training law-enforcement professionals for 25 years and has testified in 330 criminal trials
as an expert witness.
EFTA01657013
ℹ️ Document Details
SHA-256
d757af40b0a90edca342b525fb72177e3758abffbb7eaa9cf9143992998356cc
Bates Number
EFTA01657001
Dataset
DataSet-10
Document Type
document
Pages
13
Comments 0