The effect of pre-event instructions on eyewitness identification.

Research on eyewitness identification often involves exposing participants to a simulated crime and later testing memory using a lineup. We conducted a systematic review showing that pre-event instructions, instructions given before event exposure, are rarely reported and those that are reported vary in the extent to which they warn participants about the nature of the event or tasks. At odds with the experience of actual witnesses, some studies use pre-event instructions explicitly warning participants of the upcoming crime and lineup task. Both the basic and applied literature provide reason to believe that pre-event instructions may affect eyewitness identification performance. In the current experiment, we tested the impact of pre-event instructions on lineup identification decisions and confidence. Participants received non-specific pre-event instructions (i.e., "watch this video") or eyewitness pre-event instructions (i.e., "watch this crime video, you'll complete a lineup later") and completed a culprit-absent or -present lineup. We found no support for the hypothesis that participants who receive eyewitness pre-event instructions have higher discriminability than participants who receive non-specific pre-event instructions. Additionally, confidence-accuracy calibration was not significantly different between conditions. However, participants in the eyewitness condition were more likely to see the event as a crime and to make an identification than participants in the non-specific condition. Implications for conducting and interpreting eyewitness identification research and the basic research on instructions and attention are discussed.

"Only your first yes will count": The impact of prelineup instructions on sequential lineup decisions.

When administering sequential lineups, researchers often inform their participants that only their first yes response will count. This instruction differs from the original sequential lineup protocol and from how sequential lineups are conducted in practice. Participants (N = 896) viewed a videotaped mock crime and viewed a simultaneous lineup, a sequential lineup with a first-yes-counts instruction, or a sequential control lineup (with no first-yes-counts instruction); the lineup was either target-present or target-absent. Participants in the first-yes-counts condition were less likely to identify the suspect and more likely to reject the lineup than participants in the simultaneous and sequential control conditions, suggesting a conservative criterion shift. The diagnostic value of suspect identifications, as measured by partial area under the curve, was lower in the first-yes-counts lineup than in the simultaneous lineup. Results were qualitatively similar for other metrics of diagnosticity, though the differences were not statistically significant. Differences between the simultaneous and sequential control lineups were negligible on all outcomes. The first-yes-counts instruction undermines sequential lineup performance and produces an artifactual simultaneous lineup advantage. Researchers should adhere to sequential lineup protocols that maximize diagnosticity and that would feasibly be implemented in practice, allowing them to draw more generalizable conclusions from their data. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Measuring misconceptions about traumatic brain injury: are existing scales misconceived?

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES: The aim of this paper was to conduct a review of the misconception literature relating to traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to critically review the comprehensiveness, psychometric properties and other qualities of existing scales designed to measure knowledge and misconceptions of TBI. METHODS: Terms relating to misconceptions, misconception scales, public perceptions and traumatic brain injury were used to identify existing scales. The initial search was expanded using the reference lists and citations of relevant articles. MAIN OUTCOMES: Eight scales were identified for full review, with several sharing a common set of items. The majority of scales were designed to measure public perceptions of TBI, although some were developed for use in specific populations (e.g. sports, professional samples). Existing scales are limited by their scope and breadth of coverage, adoption of a medicalized view of TBI, scaling and scoring issues, failure to use a conceptual framework, and by numerous psychometric issues related to reliability and validity. CONCLUSIONS: There are a number of weaknesses attached to existing scales. Several recommendations are made to promote and inform future scale development.

Are portrait artists superior face recognizers? Limited impact of adult experience on face recognition ability.

Across 2 studies, the authors asked whether extensive experience in portrait art is associated with face recognition ability. In Study 1, 64 students completed a standardized face recognition test before and after completing a year-long art course that included substantial portraiture training. They found no evidence of an improvement in face recognition after training over and above what would be expected by practice alone. In Study 2, the authors investigated the possibility that more extensive experience might be needed for such advantages to emerge, by testing a cohort of expert portrait artists (N = 28), all of whom had many years of experience. In addition to memory for faces, they also explored memory for abstract art and for words in a paired-associate recognition test. The expert portrait artists performed similarly to a large, normative comparison sample on memory for faces and words but showed a small advantage for abstract art. Taken together, the results converge with existing literature to suggest that there is relatively little plasticity in face recognition in adulthood, at which point our substantial everyday experience with faces may have pushed us to the limits of our capabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record

How target-lure similarity shapes confidence judgments in multiple-alternative decision tasks.

Confidence judgments in 2-alternative decisions have been the subject of a great deal of research in cognitive psychology. Sequential sampling models have been particularly successful at explaining confidence judgments in such decisions and the relationships between confidence, accuracy, and response latencies. Across 5 experiments, we derived predictions from sequential sampling models and applied them to more complex decisions: multiple-alternative decisions, and compound decisions, such as eyewitness identification tasks, in which a target may be present or absent within the array of items that can be selected. We hypothesized that, when a decision-maker chooses an item, confidence in that decision reflects the relative evidence for the chosen item over all unchosen items. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating the similarity between the target (or target-replacement, for trials in which the target was not present in the array) and the weakest lure(s). As target-lure similarity decreased, confidence in correct target identifications increased, while response latencies decreased. When the decision-maker chose none of the items, the similarity between the target-replacement and the lures was unrelated to confidence. We conclude that similar mechanisms underpin confidence judgments in multiple-alternative and positive compound decisions as in simpler, 2-alternative decisions. A goal of future research should be to formally extend sequential sampling models to more complex decisions, such that it will be possible to establish whether diffusion or accumulator models provide a better fit to the data. (PsycINFO Database Record

The grain-size lineup: A test of a novel eyewitness identification procedure.

When making a memorial judgment, respondents can regulate their accuracy by adjusting the precision, or grain size, of their responses. In many circumstances, coarse-grained responses are less informative, but more likely to be accurate, than fine-grained responses. This study describes a novel eyewitness identification procedure, the grain-size lineup, in which participants eliminated any number of individuals from the lineup, creating a choice set of variable size. A decision was considered to be fine-grained if no more than 1 individual was left in the choice set or coarse-grained if more than 1 individual was left in the choice set. Participants (N = 384) watched 2 high-quality or low-quality videotaped mock crimes and then completed 4 standard simultaneous lineups or 4 grain-size lineups (2 target-present and 2 target-absent). There was some evidence of strategic regulation of grain size, as the most difficult lineup was associated with a greater proportion of coarse-grained responses than the other lineups. However, the grain-size lineup did not outperform the standard simultaneous lineup. Fine-grained suspect identifications were no more diagnostic than suspect identifications from standard lineups, whereas coarse-grained suspect identifications carried little probative value. Participants were generally reluctant to provide coarse-grained responses, which may have hampered the utility of the procedure. For a grain-size approach to be useful, participants may need to be trained or instructed to use the coarse-grained option effectively.

The other-race effect in perception and recognition: insights from the complete composite task.

People are more accurate at recognizing faces of their own race than faces from other races, a phenomenon known as the other-race effect. Other-race effects have also been reported in some perceptual tasks. Across 3 experiments, White and Chinese participants completed recognition tests as well as the complete paradigm of the composite task, which measures participants' abilities to selectively attend to the target region of a face while ignoring the task-irrelevant region of the face. Each task was completed with both own- and other-race faces. At a group level, participants showed significant own-race effects in recognition, but not in the composite task. At an individual difference level, the results provided no support for the hypothesis that a deficit in holistic processing for other-race faces drives the other-race effect in recognition. We therefore conclude that the other-race effect in recognition is not driven by the processes that underpin the composite effect.

Confidence-accuracy resolution in the misinformation paradigm is influenced by the availability of source cues.

After witnessing an event, people often report having seen details that were merely suggested to them. Evidence is mixed regarding how well participants can use confidence judgments to discriminate between their correct and misled memory reports. We tested the prediction that the confidence-accuracy relationship for misled details depends upon the availability of source cues at retrieval. In Experiment 1, participants (N=77) viewed a videotaped staged crime before reading a misleading narrative. After seven minutes or one week, the participants completed a cued recall test for the details of the original event. Prior to completing the test, all participants were warned that the narrative contained misleading details to encourage source monitoring. The results showed that the strength of the confidence-accuracy relationship declined significantly over the delay. We interpret our results in the source monitoring framework. After an extended delay, fewer diagnostic source details were available to participants, increasing reliance on retrieval fluency as a basis for memory and metamemory decisions. We tested this interpretation in a second experiment, in which participants (N=42) completed a source monitoring test instead of a cued recall test. We observed a large effect of retention interval on source monitoring, and no significant effect on item memory. This research emphasizes the importance of securing eyewitness statements as soon as possible after an event, when witnesses are most able to discriminate between information that was personally seen and information obtained from secondary sources.

Archival analyses of eyewitness identification test outcomes: what can they tell us about eyewitness memory?

Several archival studies of eyewitness identification have been conducted, but the results have been inconsistent and contradictory. We identify some avoidable pitfalls that have been present in previous analyses and present new data that address these pitfalls. We explored associations among various estimator variables and lineup outcomes for 833 "real life" lineups, including 588 lineups in which corroborating evidence of the suspect's guilt existed. Suspect identifications were associated with exposure duration, viewing distance, and the age of the witness. Nonidentifications were associated with the number of perpetrators. We also consider some of the inherent, unavoidable limitations with archival studies and consider what such studies can really tell researchers. We conclude that differences in sampling prohibit sensible comparisons between the results of laboratory and archival studies, and that the informational value of archival studies is actually rather limited.

Understanding gender bias in face recognition: effects of divided attention at encoding.

Prior research has demonstrated a female own-gender bias in face recognition, with females better at recognizing female faces than male faces. We explored the basis for this effect by examining the effect of divided attention during encoding on females' and males' recognition of female and male faces. For female participants, divided attention impaired recognition performance for female faces to a greater extent than male faces in a face recognition paradigm (Study 1; N=113) and an eyewitness identification paradigm (Study 2; N=502). Analysis of remember-know judgments (Study 2) indicated that divided attention at encoding selectively reduced female participants' recollection of female faces at test. For male participants, divided attention selectively reduced recognition performance (and recollection) for male stimuli in Study 2, but had similar effects on recognition of male and female faces in Study 1. Overall, the results suggest that attention at encoding contributes to the female own-gender bias by facilitating the later recollection of female faces.

Predictors of eyewitness identification decisions from video lineups in England: a field study.

Eyewitness identification decisions from 1,039 real lineups in England were analysed. Identification procedures have undergone dramatic change in the United Kingdom over recent years. Video lineups are now standard procedure, in which each lineup member is seen sequentially. The whole lineup is seen twice before the witness can make a decision, and the witness can request additional viewings of the lineup. A key aim of this paper was to investigate the association between repeated viewing and eyewitness decisions. Repeated viewing was strongly associated with increased filler identification rates, suggesting that witnesses who requested additional viewings were more willing to guess. In addition, several other factors were associated with lineup outcomes, including the age difference between the suspect and the witness, the type of crime committed, and delay. Overall, the suspect identification rate was 39%, the filler identification rate was 26% and the lineup rejection rate was 35%.

Backloading in the sequential lineup prevents within-lineup criterion shifts that undermine eyewitness identification performance.

Although the sequential lineup has been proposed as a means of protecting innocent suspects from mistaken identification, little is known about the importance of various aspects of the procedure. One potentially important detail is that witnesses should not know how many people are in the lineup. This is sometimes achieved by backloading the lineup so that witnesses believe that the lineup includes more photographs than it actually does. This study aimed to investigate the effect of backloading on witness decision making. A large sample (N = 833) of community-dwelling adults viewed a live "culprit" and then saw a target-present or target-absent sequential lineup. All lineups included 6 individuals, but the participants were told that the lineup included 6 photographs (nonbackloaded condition) or that the lineup included 12 or 30 photographs (backloaded conditions). The suspect either appeared early (Position 2) or late (Position 6) in the lineup. Innocent suspects placed in Position 6 were chosen more frequently by participants in the nonbackloaded condition than in either backloaded condition. Additionally, when the lineup was not backloaded, foil identification rates increased from Positions 3 to 5, suggesting a gradually shifting response criterion. The results suggest that backloading encourages participants to adopt a more conservative response criterion, and it reduces or eliminates the tendency for the criterion to become more lenient over the course of the lineup. The results underscore the absolute importance of ensuring that witnesses who view sequential lineups are unaware of the number of individuals to be seen.

Recognition and context memory for faces from own and other ethnic groups: a remember-know investigation.

People are more accurate at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group than at recognizing faces from other ethnic groups. This other-ethnicity effect (OEE) in recognition may be produced by a deficit in recollective memory for other-ethnicity faces. In a single study, White and Black participants saw White and Black faces presented within several different visual contexts. The participants were then given an old/new recognition task. Old responses were followed by remember-know-guess judgments and context judgments. Own-ethnicity faces were recognized more accurately, were given more remember responses, and produced more accurate context judgments than did other-ethnicity faces. These results are discussed in a dual-process framework, and implications for eyewitness memory are considered.

Functions for traditional and multilevel approaches to signal detection theory.

In the present article, functions written in the freeware R are presented that calculate several measures from traditional signal detection theory for each individual in a sample, along with summary statistics for the sample. Bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap confidence intervals are also produced. Arguments are made for using an alternative approach--multilevel generalized linear models--and a function is presented for it. These functions are part of the R package sdtalt, which is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network. Recent data from memory recognition studies are used to illustrate these functions.

I know your face but not where I saw you: context memory is impaired for other-race faces.

People are more likely to falsely identify a face of another race than a face of their own race. When witnesses make identifications, they often need to remember where they have previously encountered a face. Failure to remember the context of an encounter can result in unconscious transference and lead to misidentifications. Forty-five White participants were shown White and Black faces, each presented on one of five backgrounds. The participants had to identify these faces in an old/new recognition test. If participants stated that they had seen a face, they had to identify the context in which the face had originally appeared. Participants made more context errors with Black faces than with White faces. This shows that the own-race bias extends to context memory.