Clarifying the effects of sequential item presentation in the police lineup task.

Previous research has reported diverging patterns of results with respect to discriminability and response bias when comparing the simultaneous lineup to two different lineup procedures in which items are presented sequentially, the sequential stopping rule lineup and the UK lineup. In a single large sample experiment, we compared discriminability and response bias in six-item photographic lineups presented either simultaneously, sequentially with a stopping rule, or sequentially requiring two full laps through the items before making an identification and including the ability to revisit items, analogous to the UK lineup procedure. Discriminability was greater for the simultaneous lineup compared to the sequential stopping rule lineup, despite a non-significant difference in empirical discriminability between the procedures. There was no significant difference in discriminability when comparing the simultaneous lineup to the sequential two lineup and the sequential two lap lineup to the sequential stopping rule lineup. Responding was most lenient for the sequential two lap lineup, followed by the simultaneous lineup, followed by the sequential lineup. These results imply that sequential item presentation may not exert a large effect in isolation on discriminability and response bias. Rather, discriminability and response bias in the sequential stopping rule lineup and UK lineup result from the interaction of sequential item presentation with other aspects of these procedures.

Better Writing in Scientific Publications Builds Reader Confidence and Understanding.

Scientific publications are the building blocks of discovery and collaboration, but their impact is limited by the style in which they are traditionally written. Recently, many authors have called for a switch to an engaging, accessible writing style. Here, we experimentally test how readers respond to such a style. We hypothesized that scientific abstracts written in a more accessible style would improve readers' reported readability and confidence as well as their understanding, assessed using multiple-choice questions on the content. We created a series of scientific abstracts, corresponding to real publications on three scientific topics at four levels of difficulty-varying from the difficult, traditional style to an engaging, accessible style. We gave these abstracts to a team of readers consisting of 170 third-year undergraduate students. Then, we posed questions to measure the readers' readability, confidence, and understanding with the content. The scientific abstracts written in a more accessible style resulted in higher readability, understanding, and confidence. These findings demonstrate that rethinking the way we communicate our science may empower a more collaborative and diverse industry.

Do sequential lineups impair underlying discriminability?

Debate regarding the best way to test and measure eyewitness memory has dominated the eyewitness literature for more than 30 years. We argue that resolution of this debate requires the development and application of appropriate measurement models. In this study we developed models of simultaneous and sequential lineup presentations and used these to compare these procedures in terms of underlying discriminability and response bias, thereby testing a key prediction of diagnostic feature detection theory, that underlying discriminability should be greater for simultaneous than for stopping-rule sequential lineups. We fit the models to the corpus of studies originally described by Palmer and Brewer (2012, Law and Human Behavior, 36(3), 247-255), to data from a new experiment and to eight recent studies comparing simultaneous and sequential lineups. We found that although responses tended to be more conservative for sequential lineups there was little or no difference in underlying discriminability between the two procedures. We discuss the implications of these results for the diagnostic feature detection theory and other kinds of sequential lineups used in current jurisdictions.

The performance of practitioners conducting facial comparisons on images of children across age.

Determining the identity of children is critical to aid in the fight against child exploitation, as well as for passport control and visa issuance purposes. Facial image comparison is one method that may be used to determine identity. Due to the substantial amount of facial growth that occurs in childhood, it is critical to understand facial image comparison performance across both chronological age (the age of the child), and age variation (the age difference between images). In this study we examined the performance of 120 facial comparison practitioners from a government agency on a dataset of 23,760 image pairs selected from the agency's own database of controlled, operational images. Each chronological age in childhood (0-17 years) and age variations ranging from 0-10 years were examined. Practitioner performance was found to vary considerably across childhood, and depended on whether the pairs were mated (same child) or non-mated (different child). Overall, practitioners were more accurate and confident with image pairs containing older children, and also more accurate and confident with smaller age variations. Chronological age impacted on accuracy with mated pairs, but age variation did not. In contrast, both age and age variation impacted on accuracy with non-mated pairs. These differences in performance show that changes in the face throughout childhood have a significant impact on practitioner performance. We propose that improvements in accuracy may be achievable with a better understanding of which facial features are most appropriate to compare across childhood, and adjusting training and development programs accordingly.

The role of estimator variables in eyewitness identification.

Estimator variables are factors that can affect the accuracy of eyewitness identifications but that are outside of the control of the criminal justice system. Examples include (1) the duration of exposure to the perpetrator, (2) the passage of time between the crime and the identification (retention interval), (3) the distance between the witness and the perpetrator at the time of the crime. Suboptimal estimator variables (e.g., long distance) have long been thought to reduce the reliability of eyewitness identifications (IDs), but recent evidence suggests that this is not true of IDs made with high confidence and may or may not be true of IDs made with lower confidence. The evidence suggests that though suboptimal estimator variables decrease discriminability (i.e., the ability to distinguish innocent from guilty suspects), they do not decrease the reliability of IDs made with high confidence. Such findings are inconsistent with the longstanding "optimality hypothesis" and therefore require a new theoretical framework. Here, we propose that a signal-detection-based likelihood ratio account-which has long been a mainstay of basic theories of recognition memory-naturally accounts for these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record

Neutralising the meat paradox: Cognitive dissonance, gender, and eating animals.

Meat eating is a common behaviour, despite many people claiming to like, love, and care about animals. The apparent disconnection between not wanting animals to suffer, yet killing them for food, has been termed the 'meat paradox.' In this experimental study (N = 460), participants completed pre-affect, post-affect, meat attachment, and attitude towards animals questionnaires, under two conditions: exposure to the life of an Australian meat lamb, and information about the nutritional benefits of meat. A factorial MANOVA revealed that negative affect was significantly greater when participants were exposed to the meat-animal connection; however, more entrenched attitudes towards animals and attachment to meat remained unaffected. Significant gender effects were found across all variables: most notably, meat attachment differed according to gender, decreasing in women and increasing in men when exposed to the meat-animal condition. Open-ended responses were subjected to content analysis to understand participants' future meat-consumption preferences and accompanying reasoning strategies. Findings from the present study contribute to understanding how cognitive dissonance and inconsistencies are rationalised by meat consumers.

The effect of the proportion of mismatching trials and task orientation on the confidence-accuracy relationship in unfamiliar face matching.

Unfamiliar, one-to-one face matching has been shown to be error-prone. However, it is unknown whether there is a strong relationship between confidence and accuracy in this task. If there is, then confidence could be used as an indicator of accuracy in real-world face matching settings such as border security, where the objectively correct decision is typically unknown. Two experiments examined the overall confidence-accuracy relationship, as well as the relationship for positive (match) and negative (mismatch) decisions. Furthermore, they tested whether these relationships were affected by factors relevant to applied face matching settings: the proportion of mismatching trials (PMT), and the task orientation of the decision-maker (look for matches, or look for mismatches). Both calibration analyses and signal detection methods were applied to assess performance. The results showed that confidence can have a high correspondence with accuracy overall, regardless of task orientation but with small effects of PMT. Thus, confidence is promising as an indicator of accuracy in face matching. However, PMT systematically produces large detrimental effects on the confidence-accuracy relationships for positive and negative decisions, when considered separately. Signal detection measures help with understanding these effects and proposing future research directions for improving the relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Impact of State and Trait Anger on Processing of Evidential Inconsistencies.

The courtroom can be an emotional place, and these emotions may impact on a juror's ability to process and evaluate evidence. This study investigated the effects of mock-jurors' state and trait anger on the detection of evidential inconsistencies. Community members eligible for jury duty (N = 123) were randomly assigned to hear one of four audio trials differing in evidence consistency and emotion-inducing content. State anger increased endorsement of guilty verdicts, and angry mock-jurors were more careful processors of evidence, detecting more inconsistencies and recalling significantly more trial details. The results lend support to motivational theories of emotional influence on information processing.

The dynamic interaction between eyewitnesses and interviewers: the impact of differences in perspective on memory reports and interviewer behavior.

Despite myriad possible differences in perspectives brought to an investigative interview by eyewitnesses and interviewers, little is known about how such differences might affect eyewitness memory reports or interviewer behavior. Two experiments tested the impact of such differences in a dynamic interaction paradigm in which participants served as eyewitnesses and interviewers. In Experiment 1 (N = 38 pairs), reporting goals for eyewitnesses and interviewers were manipulated in a factorial design, with participants instructed to provide or obtain either as much information as possible or only accurate information. Matching interviewer-interviewee instructions promoted accurate reporting, regardless of the actual content of the instructions. In Experiment 2 (N = 45 pairs), access to information about corroborating eyewitness identifications was manipulated in a factorial design. Corroborating information affected interviewers, but not eyewitnesses. When interviewers did not have access to corroborating information, they provided more negative feedback, and there was a trend toward interrupting more and asking more yes/no questions. These experiments indicate that differences in perspective can have effects on both the content of a witness's report and the behavior of an interviewer. The potential for differences in perspective should be considered in research on protocols intended to maximize eyewitness report accuracy.

How variations in distance affect eyewitness reports and identification accuracy.

Witnesses observe crimes at various distances and the courts have to interpret their testimony given the likely quality of witnesses' views of events. We examined how accurately witnesses judged the distance between themselves and a target person, and how distance affected description accuracy, choosing behavior, and identification test accuracy. Over 1,300 participants were approached during normal daily activities, and asked to observe a target person at one of a number of possible distances. Under a Perception, Immediate Memory, or Delayed Memory condition, witnesses provided a brief description of the target, estimated the distance to the target, and then examined a 6-person target-present or target-absent lineup to see if they could identify the target. Errors in distance judgments were often substantial. Description accuracy was mediocre and did not vary systematically with distance. Identification choosing rates were not affected by distance, but decision accuracy declined with distance. Contrary to previous research, a 15-m viewing distance was not critical for discriminating accurate from inaccurate decisions.

Eyewitness identification accuracy and response latency: the unruly 10-12-second rule.

Data are reported from 3,213 research eyewitnesses confirming that accurate eyewitness identifications from lineups are made faster than are inaccurate identifications. However, consistent with predictions from the recognition and search literatures, the authors did not find support for the "10-12-s rule" in which lineup identifications faster than 10-12 s maximally discriminate between accurate and inaccurate identifications (D. Dunning & S. Perretta, 2002). Instead, the time frame that proved most discriminating was highly variable across experiments, ranging from 5 s to 29 s, and the maximally discriminating time was often unimpressive in its ability to sort accurate from inaccurate identifications. The authors suggest several factors that are likely to moderate the 10-12-s rule.

Effects of postidentification feedback on eyewitness identification and nonidentification confidence.

Two experiments investigated new dimensions of the effect of confirming feedback on eyewitness identification confidence using target-absent and target-present lineups and (previously unused) unbiased witness instructions (i.e., "offender not present" option highlighted). In Experiment 1, participants viewed a crime video and were later asked to try to identify the thief from an 8-person target-absent photo array. Feedback inflated witness confidence for both mistaken identifications and correct lineup rejections. With target-present lineups in Experiment 2, feedback inflated confidence for correct and mistaken identifications and lineup rejections. Although feedback had no influence on the confidence-accuracy correlation, it produced clear overconfidence. Confidence inflation varied with the confidence measure reference point (i.e., retrospective vs. current confidence) and identification response latency.

Effects of mood and emotion on juror processing and judgments.

This study explored the influence of mood and emotion on mock-jurors' processing of testimonial inconsistencies, perceptions of witness credibility and offender culpability, and verdicts. Jurors' mood and testimonial consistency were manipulated using a simulated trial with a 2 (mood: sad/neutral) x 2 (testimonial consistency: consistent/inconsistent) between-groups design. Sad mood resulted in more accurate reporting of testimonial inconsistencies, a finding consistent with previous research indicating more substantive processing in association with sad mood. Direct relationships between veridicality and number of inconsistencies detected and mock-juror judgments were also observed. Although anger was not experimentally manipulated, the data suggest that trial circumstances which arouse anger in jurors may impair processing and also bias their judgments of witnesses and defendants. Possible directions for research on mood and emotion in the courtroom context are suggested.