Improving Children's Person Identification

Abstract

The accuracy of children's person identification on a recall task was compared to their accuracy on specially developed feature lineup tasks. In two experiments, children participated in a play session with a stranger and subsequently were interviewed about the stranger's appearance. Each child was first asked to recall appearance features (e.g., height, age, skin color) and then was asked to identify the features using target-present lineups. In Experiment 1, 48 3- to 6-year-olds used feature lineups immediately after the play session. In Experiment 2, 48 4- to 9-year-olds used modified feature lineups that included a “don't know” option after a 2-week delay. Children's identification accuracy was significantly related to age and type of identification task. In Experiment 1, use of the feature lineups increased children's correct responses but also increased their incorrect responses. Use of the modified feature lineups in Experiment 2 led to increased accuracy with mixed results concerning commission errors. In both experiments, older children were more accurate than younger children.