Drawing leads to better recall than written or spoken methods in the cognitive interview for suspects

Drawing the scene, recalling in reverse-order, and writing the testimony, may be useful in suspect interviews. However, the relative benefit of each instruction has not been assessed, and may be important for their inclusion in the Cognitive Interview for Suspects. The drawing and the written recall were expected to provide a benefit for information gathering; and all three instructions to provide a benefit for credibility analysis. Taking part in the cheating protocol (Russano et al., 2005), 242 participants played guilty or innocent mock-suspects. They were interviewed using a draw-and-tell vs. reverse-order vs. written recall vs. spoken recall instruction. The number of details (information gathering), and the number of Reality-Monitoring criteria (RM; credibility analysis) were measured. The draw-and-tell instruction helped to gather a significant higher number of details, compared to the three other recall methods. The written recall only had a benefit over the reverse-order recall. A higher proportion of RM criteria in deceptive statements was only found in the spoken condition. While the three mnemonics do not seem to improve credibility analysis, the draw-and-tell should be encouraged in suspects interviews. The benefit of reverse-order and written recalls may be reconsidered.