Module 3

Memory and the cognitive interview: how people remember, and how to help them

Lawyers deal in accounts of past events, and an account is only as good as the memory behind it. Most people believe that memory works like a recording that can be played back more or less accurately, and that a person who is sure of what they remember must be right. Decades of research on human memory say otherwise. Memory is reconstructive: each time we recall an event we rebuild it from fragments and from what we know and expect, and it can be altered by what happens afterwards, including by the way that we are questioned. People can be honestly and confidently wrong. They also remember core events better than peripheral detail, and differ from each other, and from themselves over time, in ways that do not mean they are lying. This module sets out, in broad terms, what is known about how memory works, what damages it and what helps, and teaches the best-supported interviewing methods that follow: the cognitive interview and the PEACE model of investigative interviewing. It does not give precise percentages, because these vary with conditions, and it says plainly where findings are debated. The Statement Comparison Table in the labs shows how to compare accounts without over-reading differences. All the people are invented.

General education on listening and interviewing, using invented people, firms and events. It states psychological research in broad terms and is not a substitute for specialist training, and it is not legal advice. Rules on interviewing, contact with witnesses and represented persons, recording and the interviewing of suspects and vulnerable people differ between countries and change: check the rules that apply to you and take advice.