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Mental reinstatement of context

Definition

A CI technique in which the witness is asked to mentally return to the setting of the event, imagining what they saw, heard, smelled, and felt, to use context as a cue for episodic memory retrieval.

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...
Free recall
The CI phase in which a witness reports everything they can remember without interruption or directing questions from the interviewer, producing a...
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...

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