Free Recall
Definition
The CI phase in which a witness reports everything they can remember without interruption or directing questions from the interviewer, producing a witness-led rather than officer-led account.
- Framework
- Cognitive Interview (CI)
- Phase position
- Core reporting phase, after rapport and context reinstatement
- Interviewer behaviour
- No interruption, no directing questions
- Account type
- Witness-led, not officer-led
Common questions
How does free recall in the Cognitive Interview differ from free narrative in general interviewing?+
Free recall is the specific CI phase that follows the context reinstatement technique, where the witness has already been guided to mentally reconstruct the scene before reporting, whereas free narrative is the broader term for any uninterrupted, subject-led account regardless of what preceded it.
What is the interviewer's job during free recall if they cannot ask directing questions?+
They use minimal verbal and non-verbal encouragement, such as pauses and neutral prompts, to keep the witness talking without introducing new information, then reserve clarifying or specific questions for later phases of the interview.
Related terms
- Cognitive Interview (CI)
- An evidence-based interview technique developed by Fisher and Geiselman that uses memory-enhancement strategies including mental reinstatement of context, free recall, temporal variation,...
- Encoding Specificity
- Tulving's principle that memory retrieval is most effective when the retrieval context matches the encoding context. Mental reinstatement of context is a...
- Mental Reinstatement of Context
- A CI technique in which the witness is asked to mentally return to the setting of the event, imagining what they saw,...
- Misinformation Effect
- The incorporation of misleading post-event information into the original memory trace, documented by Loftus and Palmer (1974) and subsequent studies. Distinguished from...
- PEACE
- Preparation and Planning, Engage and Explain, Account, Closure, Evaluation: the five-stage interview framework adopted in England and Wales from 1992, used for...