Improving the Enhanced Cognitive Interview With a New Interview Strategy: Category Clustering Recall

Increasing recall is crucial for investigative interviews. The enhanced cognitive interview (ECI) has been widely used for this purpose and found to be generally effective. We focused on further increasing recall with a new interview strategy, category clustering recall (CCR). Participants watched a mock robbery video and were interviewed 48 hours later with either the (i) ECI; (ii) revised enhanced cognitive interview 1 (RECI1) — with CCR instead of the change order mnemonic during the second recall; or (iii) revised enhanced cognitive interview 2 (RECI2) — also with CCR but conjunctly used with ‘eye closure’ and additional open-ended follow up questions. Participants interviewed with CCR (RECI1 and RECI2) produced more information without compromising accuracy; thus, CCR was effective. Eye closure and additional open-ended follow up questions did not further influence recall when using CCR. Major implications for real-life investigations are discussed.