The effect of the interviewer’s cognitive load on the quality of the forensic interview

Background/Aim: The aim of this experiment was to investigate the impact of the interviewer’s cognitive load resulting from the interview presentation modality on the interviewer’s performance.

Method: A total of 120 participants took on the role of the interviewer and were either exposed to a video with audio of an interview with a mock suspect (high cognitive load condition) or just the audio clip of that interview (low cognitive load condition). The suspects were either truthful or deceptive. The mock interviewers were asked to recall what the suspect said during the interview, propose follow-up questions, and determine whether the suspect was truthful or deceptive.

Results: The interviewer’s cognitive load did not affect recall, but participants in the interviewer’s low cognitive load condition asked more questions and more high-quality questions and demonstrated better accuracy in determining whether the interviewees were truthful or deceptive than participants in the interviewer’s high cognitive load condition.

Conclusions: The results suggest that access to both vocal and visual cues (interviewer’s high cognitive load) hampers the quality of the interview and veracity assessments.