Back to the Real: Efficacy and Perception of a Modified Cognitive Interview in the Field CINDY COLOMB 1,2 *, MAGALI GINET 1,2 , DANIEL WRIGHT 3 , SAMUEL DEMARCHI 4 and CHRISTOPHE SADLER 5 1 Clermont Université, Université Blaise Pascal, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive, Clermont-Ferrand, France 2 CNRS, UMR 6024, Clermont-Ferrand, Cedex, France 3 Department of Psychology, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA 4 Université Paris 8, Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale, Saint-Denis, Cedex, France 5 Brigade territoriale autonome de gendarmerie de Gardanne, Chemin Font-de-Garach, Gardanne, France Summary: Since the Cognitive Interview (CI) was developed, many experiments have been published, but only two have investigated its efficacy in real criminal cases. Here, a Modified CI (MCI) is tested with real interviews in an inquisitor justice system. Several moderators and the interviewers’ attitudes towards the CI/MCI are also examined. Eighty-one witnesses were interviewed by 27 French military police officers, with a Standard Police Interview, a Structured Interview (SI), or an MCI. The MCI produced the most forensically relevant information, especially for victims. Trainees judged the SI and the MCI useful, usable, and acceptable, and felt efficient in using them, beliefs that increased after 1 year of practice. The self-efficacy was linked with the declared use of the techniques. In all, this study confirmed the efficacy of the CI/MCI as a tool to be used in the field, with some cautions to be underlined, notably because of the small sample size considered. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION The Cognitive Interview (CI) is a well-established technique used to enhance the recollection of eyewitness testimonies. Created 30 years ago by Geiselman and Fisher (Geiselman, Fisher, Firstenberg, Hutton, Sullivan, Avetissian, & Prosk, 1984), it can be considered as the most successful scientific protocol for interviewing eyewitnesses (cf., Conversation Management, Shepherd, 1988; Memorandum of Good Practice, Home Office, 1992). The CI has been well-researched and has undergone several improvements (Memon, Meissner, & Fraser, 2010). Memon et al. (2010) identified 65 experiments on the CI in 25 years, with modified protocols being currently developed [Modified CIs (MCIs)]. However, while there is a wealth of laboratory research, only two studies have tested its efficacy in the field, and none has been reported for over 15 years (Fisher, Geiselman, & Amador, 1989; Clifford & George, 1996). The major aim of the current experiment is to assess the efficacy of an MCI in an inquisitor system, with witnesses/ victims of real crimes and professional interviewers from the military police. This study also provides the opportunity to examine several potential moderators of the benefit of the MCI in the field (i.e., interviewees’ gender, age, and status; interviewers’ gender, age, and seniority; and type of events), as well as the police officers’ attitudes towards the technique (i.e., perceived utility, usability, institutional acceptability, and self-efficacy). From the Cognitive Interview to the modified versions: a historical description The CI was originally built upon two principles extrapolated from Tulving’s conception of human memory: (a) mental re-creation of the context of the crime at the time of retrieval facilitates memory (i.e., encoding specificity principle, Tulving & Thomson, 1973), and (b) different mental paths/cues can lead to the same memory (i.e., varied retrieval, Bower, 1967; Tulving, 1974). In its initial form, the CI was composed of four retrieval mnemonics: report everything, mental context reinstatement, change temporal order, and change perspective. Then, Fisher and Geiselman (1992; see also Fisher, Geiselman, Raymond, Jurkevich, & Warhaftig, 1987) proposed an Enhanced CI (ECI). In addition to the four retrieval tech- niques, they included several communication components grounded in research from social and cognitive psychology and aimed at improving the social dynamics of the interview (see Fisher, 2011; Fisher & Geiselman, 2010, for recent descriptions). For instance, with this new procedure that is interviewee-centered, the interviewer is encouraged to listen actively and discouraged from interrupting the free recall of the interviewee, giving the interviewee the control of the interview. The interviewer must help the interviewee to answer questions by organizing the interview in a way that is compatible with the interviewee’s mental record of the event and by using focused retrieval techniques and mental images to guide recall. The interviewee is told not to guess or to fabricate, and told to say ‘I don’t know’ if appropriate. Recently, MCIs have been developed that omit the change perspective mnemonic (e.g., Wright & Holliday, 2007) or omit both the change perspective and the change temporal order (e.g., Davis, McMahon, & Greenwood, 2005). The version tested in the current research omits both the change temporal order and the change perspective instructions. Previous laboratory research found that these two mnemonics do not increase the amount of correct details recalled (e.g., Boon & Noon, 1994; Milne & Bull, 2002; Py, Ginet, Demarchi, & Ansanay-Alex, 2001) and, therefore, that this shorten version is as effective (e.g., Bensi, Nori, Gambetti, & Giusberti, 2011; Colomb & Ginet, 2012). Further, research has found that police officers judge these mnemonics difficult to use and believe they are less valuable than the other mnemonics (Clarke & Milne, 2005; Dando, Wilcok, & Milne, 2008; 2009a; Kebbell, Milne & Wagstaff, 1999). Several social *Correspondence to: Cindy Colomb, LAPSCO/CNRS/UBP-34, Avenue Carnot, 63037, Clermont-Ferrand, France. E-mail: cindy.colomb@univ-bpclermont.fr Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 27: 574–583 (2013) Published online 6 August 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.2942