A strength of the cognitive approach is that it has real world applications. The cognitive approach has been able to improve eyewitness testimony through the development of the cognitive interview, which is used to gather evidence. The cognitive interview encourages witnesses to remember details of the crime through different memory strategies, such as recalling the events of the crime in a different order, or from another perspective. As the cognitive approach assumes we are impacted by schema, recalling the information in a different way (such as in the cognitive interview), the effects of schema are reduced. This is important as the cognitive approach has allowed the validity of evidence to increase, which then has positive effects on the criminal justice system - both due to evidence allowing criminals to be punished effectively, and also through disproving the involvement of innocent individuals and freeing them from possibly unfair punishment.
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