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Calderwood L, Ballantyne C, Slee K. The role of experimenter familiarity in children's eyewitness identification. PSYCHIATRY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND LAW : AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHIATRY, PSYCHOLOGY AND LAW 2023; 31:147-160. [PMID: 38628252 PMCID: PMC11018025 DOI: 10.1080/13218719.2023.2175071] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/05/2022] [Accepted: 01/25/2023] [Indexed: 04/19/2024]
Abstract
Child eyewitnesses show a high false identification rate on target-absent (TA) lineups despite good performance on target-present (TP) lineups. One explanation is that children feel a social pressure to choose when presented with a TA lineup. We investigated whether experimenter familiarity would reduce social pressure and improve accuracy on TA lineups. Children (5-7 years, N = 120) watched a short video of a staged theft; 1-2 days later they completed a TP or TA lineup with a familiar or unfamiliar experimenter. Experimenter familiarity had an impact on lineup response in TA lineups only, with more correct 'not there' and fewer 'not sure' responses when the children were familiar with the experimenter. The results provide further evidence to support the social aspect of eyewitness identification decisions in children and provide a possible strategy to improve identification accuracy for those working with children in the criminal justice system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lesley Calderwood
- Division of Psychology, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, UK
| | - Carrie Ballantyne
- Division of Psychology, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, UK
| | - Kimberley Slee
- Division of Psychology, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, UK
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Winter K, Menne NM, Bell R, Buchner A. Experimental validation of a multinomial processing tree model for analyzing eyewitness identification decisions. Sci Rep 2022; 12:15571. [PMID: 36114219 PMCID: PMC9481595 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-19513-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2022] [Accepted: 08/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
AbstractTo improve police protocols for lineup procedures, it is helpful to understand the processes underlying eyewitness identification performance. The two-high threshold (2-HT) eyewitness identification model is a multinomial processing tree model that measures four latent cognitive processes on which eyewitness identification decisions are based: two detection-based processes (the detection of culprit presence and absence) and two non-detection-based processes (biased and guessing-based selection). The model takes into account the full 2 × 3 data structure of lineup procedures, that is, suspect identifications, filler identifications and rejections in both culprit-present and culprit-absent lineups. Here the model is introduced and the results of four large validation experiments are reported, one for each of the processes specified by the model. The validation experiments served to test whether the model’s parameters sensitively reflect manipulations of the processes they were designed to measure. The results show that manipulations of exposure duration of the culprit’s face at encoding, lineup fairness, pre-lineup instructions and ease of rejection of culprit-absent lineups were sensitively reflected in the parameters representing culprit-presence detection, biased suspect selection, guessing-based selection and culprit-absence detection, respectively. The results of the experiments thus validate the interpretations of the parameters of the 2-HT eyewitness identification model.
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A validation of the two-high threshold eyewitness identification model by reanalyzing published data. Sci Rep 2022; 12:13379. [PMID: 35927288 PMCID: PMC9352666 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-17400-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2022] [Accepted: 07/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The two-high threshold (2-HT) eyewitness identification model serves as a new measurement tool to measure the latent cognitive processes underlying eyewitness identification performance. By simultaneously taking into account correct culprit identifications, false innocent-suspect identifications, false filler identifications in culprit-present and culprit-absent lineups as well as correct and false lineup rejections, the model capitalizes on the full range of data categories that are observed when measuring eyewitness identification performance. Thereby, the model is able to shed light on detection-based and non-detection-based processes underlying eyewitness identification performance. Specifically, the model incorporates parameters for the detection of culprit presence and absence, biased selection of the suspect and guessing-based selection among the lineup members. Here, we provide evidence of the validity of each of the four model parameters by applying the model to eight published data sets. The data sets come from studies with experimental manipulations that target one of the underlying processes specified by the model. Manipulations of encoding difficulty, lineup fairness and pre-lineup instructions were sensitively reflected in the parameters reflecting culprit-presence detection, biased selection and guessing-based selection, respectively. Manipulations designed to facilitate the rejection of culprit-absent lineups affected the parameter for culprit-absence detection. The reanalyses of published results thus suggest that the parameters sensitively reflect the manipulations of the processes they were designed to measure, providing support of the validity of the 2-HT eyewitness identification model.
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Brewer N, Doyle J. Changing the face of police lineups: Delivering more information from witnesses. JOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN MEMORY AND COGNITION 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.12.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
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Spring T, Saltzstein HD, Siegel L. Gender Differences in Moral Influences on Adolescents' Eyewitness Identification. The Journal of Genetic Psychology 2020; 182:47-59. [PMID: 33210580 DOI: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1844131] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
In this study, 232 (89 11- to 12-year-olds, 71 13- to 14-year-olds; 72 15- to 16-year-olds) students recruited from grades 6th-11th in an urban public high school participated in a study of eyewitness identification. The focus of this study was on the effects of age, gender and moral orientation on decisional bias and, as a secondary outcome, on accuracy (using signal detection analysis).The primary purpose of this and previous studies in this series is to uncover implicit moral decision-making in decisional bias. In this study the perpetrator, the bystanders and the foil were all females. Prior to completing the eyewitness identification task, participants were given instructions that emphasized either (a) fairness and crime prevention, or (b) neither. These instructions had no discernible effect on accuracy but, as in past studies, younger participants (below the age of 13) had lower decisional criteria, resulting in a higher rate of false alarms/positives. Further, those who judged the transgression as worse had a lower decisional criterion, indicating more false alarms. Females were more accurate than the males in identifying the female perpetrator and scored significantly higher on how bad they would feel if they were the victim than did the males.
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Affiliation(s)
- Toni Spring
- Department of Psychology, Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, New York, USA
| | | | - Leeann Siegel
- Department of Communication, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
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Developmental trends in lineup performance: Adolescents are more prone to innocent bystander misidentifications than children and adults. Mem Cognit 2019; 47:428-440. [PMID: 30478519 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-018-0877-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
We tested developmental trends in eyewitness identification in biased and unbiased lineups. Our main interest was adolescent's lineup performance compared with children and adults. 7-10-year-olds, 11-13-year-olds, 14-16-year-olds, and adults (N = 431) watched a wallet-theft-video and subsequently identified the thief, victim, and witness from simultaneous target-present and target-absent six-person photo lineups. The thief-absent lineup included a bystander previously seen in thief proximity. Research on unconscious transference suggested a selection bias toward the bystander in adults and 11-13-year-olds, but not in younger children. Confirming our hypothesis, adolescents were more prone to bystander bias than all other age groups. This may be due to adolescents making more inferential errors than children, as predicted by fuzzy-trace theory and associative-activation theory, combined with lower inhibition control in adolescents compared with adults. We also replicated a clothing bias for all age groups and age-related performance differences in our unbiased lineups. Consistent with previous findings, participants were generally overconfident in their decisions, even though confidence was a better predictor of accuracy in older compared with younger participants. With this study, we show that adolescents have an increased tendency to misidentify an innocent bystander. Continued efforts are needed to disentangle how adolescents in comparison to other age groups perform in forensically relevant situations.
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Abstract
AbstractSince the late 1980s evidence has been accumulating that confidence recorded at the time of identification is a reliable postdictor of eyewitness identification. Nonetheless, there may be noteworthy exceptions. In a re-analysis of a field study by Sauerland and Sporer (2009; N = 720; n = 436 choosers between 15 and 83 years old) we show that the postdictive value of confidence was reduced for participants aged 40 years or older. Different calibration indices and Bayesian analyses demonstrate a progressive dissociation between identification performance and confidence across age groups. While the confidence expressed following an identification remained unchanged across the lifespan, identification accuracy decreased. Young, highly confident witnesses were much more likely to be accurate than less confident witnesses. With increasing age, witnesses were more likely to be overconfident, particularly at the medium and high levels of confidence, and the postdictive value of confidence and decision times decreased. We conclude that witness age may be an important moderator to take into account when evaluating identification evidence.
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Bruer KC, Price HL. A Repeated Forced-choice Line-up Procedure Provides Suspect Bias Information with No Cost to Accuracy for Older Children and Adults. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2017. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.3342] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Kaila C. Bruer
- Department of Psychology; University of Regina; Regina Canada
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Wixted JT, Wells GL. The Relationship Between Eyewitness Confidence and Identification Accuracy: A New Synthesis. Psychol Sci Public Interest 2017; 18:10-65. [DOI: 10.1177/1529100616686966] [Citation(s) in RCA: 174] [Impact Index Per Article: 24.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Summary The U.S. legal system increasingly accepts the idea that the confidence expressed by an eyewitness who identified a suspect from a lineup provides little information as to the accuracy of that identification. There was a time when this pessimistic assessment was entirely reasonable because of the questionable eyewitness-identification procedures that police commonly employed. However, after more than 30 years of eyewitness-identification research, our understanding of how to properly conduct a lineup has evolved considerably, and the time seems ripe to ask how eyewitness confidence informs accuracy under more pristine testing conditions (e.g., initial, uncontaminated memory tests using fair lineups, with no lineup administrator influence, and with an immediate confidence statement). Under those conditions, mock-crime studies and police department field studies have consistently shown that, for adults, (a) confidence and accuracy are strongly related and (b) high-confidence suspect identifications are remarkably accurate. However, when certain non-pristine testing conditions prevail (e.g., when unfair lineups are used), the accuracy of even a high-confidence suspect ID is seriously compromised. Unfortunately, some jurisdictions have not yet made reforms that would create pristine testing conditions and, hence, our conclusions about the reliability of high-confidence identifications cannot yet be applied to those jurisdictions. However, understanding the information value of eyewitness confidence under pristine testing conditions can help the criminal justice system to simultaneously achieve both of its main objectives: to exonerate the innocent (by better appreciating that initial, low-confidence suspect identifications are error prone) and to convict the guilty (by better appreciating that initial, high-confidence suspect identifications are surprisingly accurate under proper testing conditions).
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Affiliation(s)
- John T. Wixted
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego
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An Investigation of the Weapon Focus Effect and the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship for Eyewitness Identification. JOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN MEMORY AND COGNITION 2017. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2016.04.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
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Knutsson J, Allwood CM. Swedish Legal Professionals' Opinions on Child and Adult Witness Memory-reporting Capabilities: Using the Method of Indirect Comparisons. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2015. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.3117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Jens Knutsson
- Department of Psychology; Lund University; Lund Sweden
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Humphries JE, Flowe HD. Receiver operating characteristic analysis of age-related changes in lineup performance. J Exp Child Psychol 2015; 132:189-204. [PMID: 25701225 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2014.12.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2014] [Revised: 12/23/2014] [Accepted: 12/24/2014] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
In the basic face memory literature, support has been found for the late maturation hypothesis, which holds that face recognition ability is not fully developed until at least adolescence. Support for the late maturation hypothesis in the criminal lineup identification literature, however, has been equivocal because of the analytic approach that has been used to examine age-related changes in identification performance. Recently, receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis was applied for the first time in the adult eyewitness memory literature to examine whether memory sensitivity differs across different types of lineup tests. ROC analysis allows for the separation of memory sensitivity from response bias in the analysis of recognition data. Here, we have made the first ROC-based comparison of adults' and children's (5- and 6-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds) memory performance on lineups by reanalyzing data from Humphries, Holliday, and Flowe (2012). In line with the late maturation hypothesis, memory sensitivity was significantly greater for adults compared with young children. Memory sensitivity for older children was similar to that for adults. The results indicate that the late maturation hypothesis can be generalized to account for age-related performance differences on an eyewitness memory task. The implications for developmental eyewitness memory research are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joyce E Humphries
- Department of Psychology, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire L39 4QP, UK.
| | - Heather D Flowe
- School of Psychology, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 9HN, UK
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Fitzgerald RJ, Whiting BF, Therrien NM, Price HL. Lineup Member Similarity Effects on Children's Eyewitness Identification. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2014. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.3012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Heather L. Price
- Department of Psychology; University of Regina; Regina SK Canada
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Hiller RM, Weber N. A comparison of adults’ and children's metacognition for yes/no recognition decisions. JOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN MEMORY AND COGNITION 2013. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2013.07.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
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Spring T, Saltzstein HD, Peach R. Children's Eyewitness Identification as Implicit Moral Decision-Making. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2012. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.2871] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/10/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Toni Spring
- Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education, Queens College; CUNY; Flushing; USA
| | | | - Roger Peach
- Department of Educational Psychology, Lehman College; CUNY; Bronx; USA
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Klemfuss JZ, Ceci SJ. Legal and psychological perspectives on children’s competence to testify in court. DEVELOPMENTAL REVIEW 2012. [DOI: 10.1016/j.dr.2012.06.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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Fitzgerald RJ, Price HL, Connolly DA. Anxious and Nonanxious Children's Face Identification. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2012. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.2833] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Heather L. Price
- Department of Psychology; University of Regina; Regina; SK; Canada
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Clifford BR, Havard C, Memon A, Gabbert F. Delay and Age Effects on Identification Accuracy and Confidence: An Investigation Using a Video Identification Parade. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2011. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.1804] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Amina Memon
- Royal Holloway, University of London; Egham; Surrey; UK
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Abstract
Eyewitness identifications play an important role in many police investigations and courtroom decisions. Identification decision accuracy is shaped not only by the quality of a witness's memory but also by social-influence variables. Some variables can be categorized as general impairments, whereas others produce biases against a specific suspect. We review some of the key variables in each category and consider postidentification indicators of identification accuracy. Finally, we highlight what we think are some of the major directions for future research. These include addressing some of the significant limitations of past research, examining variables that are not directly related to memory or social influence, and developing some radical new directions for identification tests.
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Zajac R, Karageorge A. The wildcard: A simple technique for improving children's target-absent lineup performance. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2009. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.1511] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/10/2022]
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Eyewitness confidence and latency: Indices of memory processes not just markers of accuracy. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2008. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.1486] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
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