To know where the bodies are buried: the use of the cognitive interview in an environmental scale spatial memory retrieval task

Missing body homicide cases have gained public interest globally due to some high-profile cases. In many of these cases, the task of locating the victim’s remains relies on the information investigators can gain through the interviewing of willing suspects. To date investigative interviewing research has largely focussed on the retrieval of episodic memory (events) without focussing on spatial memory; a prominent cognitive task required in locating a victim’s remains. The current experiment tests the enhanced cognitive interview (ECI) against a free recall strategy in a mock homicide scenario where participants are required to hide and retrieve an object in a natural bushland setting. The results showed that those in the ECI condition produced more coarse- and fine-grained details of landmarks and their actions at, and journeying to the deposition site. This demonstrates the value of using the ECI in generating more valuable information to assist in successive search attempts.