Evaluating the effectiveness of the self administered interview for witnesses with autism spectrum disorder

The Cognitive Interview (CI) is a widely accepted police interviewing technique and elicits the most detailed reports from most witnesses. However, previous research has found it to be ineffective with witnesses with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and it fails to increase the number of correct details that they recall (Maras & Bowler, 2010). One of the CI’s main components, context reinstatement (CR), involves the witness following verbal instructions from the interviewer to mentally recreate the personal and physical context that they experienced at the time of the event. A number of aspects of this CR procedure may be problematic for witnesses with ASD, including the social component and following a series of verbal instructions. The Self Administered Interview (SAI) is a recently developed evidence-based investigative tool that adopts some of the key components of the CI but without the interactive social element, meaning that it may be more suitable than the CI for witnesses with ASD. We report evidence showing, however, that the SAI is also ineffective for this group and, in contrast to control participants, it does not increase correct details reported, including in the CR stage. Findings will be discussed in terms of both theoretical and practical implications.