New project wins £250k to improve accuracy of intelligence interviews

A new project led by the University of Portsmouth, which will help security professionals remember and report critical information more accurately, has secured £250k funding.  

The project will investigate new ways to improve how officers gather, retain and recall information from interviews, even when they are working under demanding operational conditions and without access to recording technology. 

Dr Gianmarco Convertino has been awarded the prestigious postdoctoral research fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering. He said: “Effective interviewing relies heavily on human memory, and we aim at decoding fundamental mechanisms that enable reliable, bias-resistant information gathering.

"I am honoured that this project was selected for funding among highly competitive STEM disciplines. It's an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of cognitive research toward new meaningful real-world applications”.  

Dr Convertino will work alongside Professor of Applied Cognitive Psychology, Lorraine Hope, an internationally recognised expert in investigative interviewing and intelligence gathering. 

Professor Hope from the University’s School of Psychology, Sport and Health Sciences, said: “In a stroke of good fortune, one of the topics listed by the UK Intelligence Community was directly in my field of expertise and I managed to recruit Gianmarco, an excellent applicant from Sapienza University of Rome.  

“I genuinely couldn't be more excited that we will have an opportunity to work on this challenge here at Portsmouth. Given the profile of this award, it's a real coup we can host it here across strength areas relating to security, technology and research with impact.”

Security professionals are often required to produce detailed accounts of conversations and interviews that can inform important decisions and risk assessments.  

However, human memory is not perfect, and factors such as time pressure, complex information and challenging environments can affect how accurately details are remembered. 

The project, Securing Optimal Understanding and Recall in Cognitive Elicitation (SOURCE), will test evidence-based techniques designed to strengthen memory both during interviews and when information is recalled and reported later.  

The research will also examine whether teams remember events more accurately when working together, or whether group discussions can unintentionally introduce errors by influencing individual memories. 

A key part of the project is the cross-faculty collaboration within the University. The researchers will work with experts in the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI) to employ the use of cutting-edge mixed reality technology. Participants will conduct realistic interviews with AI-powered virtual characters, allowing researchers to recreate the complexity and pressures of real-world intelligence gathering in a controlled environment. 

Professor of Digital Culture and Social Innovation, Christian Morgner, is research lead for the The Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality (CCIXR) in CCI. He said: “Immersive technology offers exciting new possibilities for understanding how people think, communicate and remember information in complex situations. By combining AI-powered virtual characters with mixed reality environments, we can recreate realistic interviewing scenarios that would be difficult to replicate using traditional research methods. This allows us to explore how people respond under pressure and develop more effective approaches to gathering and recalling critical information. 

“This project is a fantastic example of how collaboration between creative technologies and cognitive science can lead to innovative research with real-world applications, particularly in areas as important as security and intelligence.” 

While previous studies have largely focused on police interviews or simple laboratory-based tasks, these approaches do not fully reflect the challenges faced by security professionals. 

The SOURCE project is the first to bring together memory science, immersive technology and intelligence-specific interviewing challenges within a single research programme. 

The findings are expected to provide practical guidance for a range of security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies that rely on high-quality information gathering.  

The research will also inform future training programmes, helping professionals report information more accurately and make better-informed decisions.  

The Research Fellowships, which are funded by the Department of Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), support outstanding early-career researchers to become future research leaders by providing funding for an ambitious five-year programme of independent research.  

Co-funded for the first time by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) alongside the Government Office for Science, which has supported the programme for ten years, the ICRF is designed to promote unclassified basic research over a two-year period in areas of interest to the intelligence, security and defence communities.   

Professor Charlotte Deane, UKRI Senior Responsible Owner for IS8 National Security and Defence, said: "These fellowships support outstanding early-career researchers to pursue ambitious fundamental research while working closely with partners across the national security community. 

"Through our partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Government Office for Science, the programme creates valuable connections between researchers and technical experts. Together, we are helping to build the talent and research capability needed to address future national security challenges and strengthen the UK's research and innovation ecosystem."