Abstract
It is known that children and older adults produce more false alarms in target absent line-ups and that weaker facial encoding increases choosing bias. However, there has been no investigation of how age or facial encoding strength impacts line-up position selections in either sequential or simultaneous line-ups. In the present study, we presented participants with four live targets (one by one) while manipulating sequential and simultaneous line-ups between participants and target present and target absent line-ups within participants. In order to investigate facial encoding strength, we presented the targets at distances between 5 and 110 m. Our main hypotheses were that children due to deficits with inhibition would be more biased toward indiscriminate selections in the first position of sequential line-ups compared with subsequent line-up positions and that first position selections would increase for all age groups as facial encoding became weaker. In simultaneous line-ups, we expected to find a top row bias. In our sample (N = 1,588 participants; 6–77 years), we found that younger children (6–11 years) and the oldest adults (60–77 years) showed a first position bias in sequential line-ups, and as facial encoding became weaker, all age groups (6–11, 12–17, 18–44, 45–59, and 60–77 years) showed an increased tendency to make first position selections. We also found a weak top row preference in simultaneous line-ups, which was moderated by age and increased distance. The main finding is that the results suggest that younger children and the oldest adults had a tendency toward a first position selection bias in sequential line-ups. Based on the combined results, we recommend caution when using sequential line-ups with younger children or older adults.
Highlights
Photograph line-ups are commonly used by the police to investigate whether or not their suspect matches an eyewitness’s memory of the perpetrator of a crime, and a lineup identification or rejection can be used as corroborating or exonerating evidence of a suspect’s guilt (Wells, 1993; Wells and Olson, 2002)
We have broken down the frequencies of observed target identifications, filler identifications, and rejections per distance block (i.e., 5–20, 25–40, 45–70, and 80–110), per age group (6–11, 12–17, 18–44, 45–59, and 60–77), and line-up type
We focused on two aspects that have not been combined with position effects before: facial encoding strength and eyewitness age
Summary
Photograph line-ups (i.e., photo arrays) are commonly used by the police to investigate whether or not their suspect matches an eyewitness’s memory of the perpetrator of a crime, and a lineup identification or rejection can be used as corroborating or exonerating evidence of a suspect’s guilt (Wells, 1993; Wells and Olson, 2002). There are age differences in lineup choosing biases, there appear to have been no systematic investigations of the differences between line-up position selection patterns between age groups This is relevant because if, for example, a child eyewitness (who has low inhibition and may rely on familiarity) is presented with a sequential line-up, it may be that their choosing bias is skewed toward selecting the first line-up position. Recent findings show that weaker facial encoding increases choosing rates (Nyman et al, 2019b; Smith et al, 2019) Combined, these results may indicate that age and facial encoding strength have an interactive effect on line-up position selections, manifested by, for example, children showing an increased tendency toward selecting the first line-up position due to both weaker facial encoding and low inhibition combined
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