The Cognitive Interview: Application to Clinical Setting to Enhance Traumatic Experiences

Abstract

The cognitive interview is a very powerful technique to facilitate the recall of eye witness, so far it was used only in forensic psychology.

The cognitive interview focuses on two major component of testimony: memory and comunication. The core memory priciple of this technique is the notion of guided retrieval. Because all of the relevant information resides in the eye mind, the goal is to assist her to access that. Each person is the Eye Witness of own Traumatic experiences. The Cognitive Interview enhances memory by:assisting the doctor to infer the patient"s mental representation of the event,suggesting techniquesto ensure that the patient becomes the central personality of the interview and providing retrieval strategies to facilitate the person"s accessing specific memories.

in this study we apply this technique in the clinical setting to improve the retrieval of the patient"s traumatic experiences.

We considered two classes of subjects (age and sex mached), assessed with psychopatological rating scales:

1. 1. using cognitive interview

2. 2. using structured interview

after was evaluated the quality and the quantity of past traumatic experiences.