Six-person Lineups Research Articles

Kısmi Hafıza: Kapsamlı Yüzleştirmeye Başvurulması için Bir Başka Neden mi?

Introduction: The 48-person lineup has been found to decrease substantially mistaken identifications, with little cost to correct ones. The goal of this experiment was to increase correct identifications. Purpose: Study 1 attempted to increase identifications in the 48-person lineup by omitting the warning that the target may not be in the lineup. Study 2 aimed at examining potential reasons why the attempt failed. Method: In study 1 a 48-person lineup was shown, with or without the warning and with the target present or absent. In study 2 target-present lineups were shown, either a six-person or 48-person lineup. All were then asked to count the number of lineup members that they could discount as not being the target. Results: Study 2 found that after discounting six-person lineups were left with 1 lineup member, in 48-person ones 8.3.no difference in the number of identifications between the two warning conditions. Six-person lineups yielded more identifications. Conclusions: The results suggest that witnesses in 6-person lineups achieve more identifications by discounting lineup members and guessing from the remaining. Further research is suggested. Keywords: Eyewitness identification, 48-person lineups, partial memory

The effect of choice reversals on blindness for identification decisions

ABSTRACTThe present study examined blindness for identification decisions from target-present (TP) and target-absent (TA) lineups using a field study methodology. Eighty pedestrians were exposed to a staged theft. Subsequently, they were asked to identify the thief and the victim from separate, simultaneous six-person lineups. Their identification decision concerning the thief lineup was manipulated such that participants’ selections were exchanged with a previously unidentified lineup member (choice exchange) and lineup rejections were turned into identifications (choice reversal). Participants were 7–10 times less likely to detect choice exchanges (66.7%) compared with choice reversals (11.2%). Furthermore, identification accuracy was not a prerequisite for detection. Thus, rejections and particularly selections made from both TP and TA lineups are susceptible to choice blindness. Finally, our study implies that for blindness in eyewitness identification decisions between-category changes (i.e. choice reversals) are easier to detect than within-category changes (i.e. choice exchanges).

Forgetting the once-seen face: Estimating the strength of an eyewitness's memory representation.

The fidelity of an eyewitness's memory representation is an issue of paramount forensic concern. Psychological science has been unable to offer more than vague generalities concerning the relation of retention interval to memory trace strength for the once-seen face. A meta-analysis of 53 facial memory studies produced a highly reliable association (r=.18, d=0.37) between longer retention intervals and positive forgetting of once-seen faces, an effect equally strong for both face recognition and eyewitness identification studies. W. A. Wickelgren's (1974, 1975, 1977) theory of recognition memory provided statistically satisfactory fits to 11 different empirical forgetting functions. Applied to the results of field studies of eyewitness memory, the theory yields predictions relevant to fact finders' evaluations of eyewitness credibility. A plausible upper limit for witness initial memory strength corresponds to a probability of .67 of being correct on a fair six-person lineup. Furthermore, not only can the percentage of remaining memory strength be determined for any retention interval, but this strength estimate can be translated into an estimated probability of being correct on a fair lineup of a specified size.

Suspect/Foil Identification in Actual Crimes and in the Laboratory: A Reality Monitoring Analysis.

Four reality monitoring variables were used to discriminate suspect from foil identifications in 183 actual criminal cases. Four hundred sixty-one identification attempts based on five and six-person lineups were analyzed. These identification attempts resulted in 238 suspect identifications and 68 foil identifications. Confidence, automatic processing, eliminative processing and feature use comprised the set of reality monitoring variables. Thirty-five verbal confidence phrases taken from police reports were assigned numerical values on a 10-point confidence scale. Automatic processing identifications were those that occurred "immediately" or "without hesitation." Eliminative processing identifications occurred when witnesses compared or eliminated persons in the lineups. Confidence, automatic processing and eliminative processing were significant predictors, but feature use was not. Confidence was the most effective discriminator. In cases that involved substantial evidence extrinsic to the identification 43% of the suspect identifications were made with high confidence, whereas only 10% of the foil identifications were made with high confidence. The results of a laboratory study using the same predictors generally paralleled the archival results. Forensic implications are discussed.

Earwitness identification over the telephone and in field settings

Earwitnesses were asked to describe and identify the voice of a young woman to whom they had spoken approximately five minutes earlier either in a naturalistic field setting or over the telephone. Witnesses were given a single tape-recorded voice of either the target or a highly similar foil, or a target present or a target absent six-person voice line-up. Half of the witnesses in the naturalistic settings were given a photograph of the target as a retrieval cue when they attempted to describe and identify the voice of the target. Witnesses gave few descriptions of the speaker’s voice. Voice identification was poor in both types of setting. Those witnesses who were prepared for a memory test were superior to non-prepared witnesses on the subsequent identification test. Photographic retrieval cues did not influence voice descriptions, but did minimize false identifications on the target absent line-up for witnesses prepared for the test. The six-person line-up proved to be significantly superior to the one-person lineup in minimizing false identifications of the most highly similar sounding foil.

Accuracy of eyewitness identifications in showups and lineups.

Experiment 1 tested one-person and six-person photographic lineup identifications in field situations either immediately, or 30 minutes, or 2 hours, or 24 hours after a 15-second ordinary encounter with a target. Accuracy of performance was superior in six-person lineups than in showups over time. False identifications of a lookalike innocent suspect were significantly greater in showups than in six-person lineups, especially when the suspect wore the same clothing as the culprit. Experiment 2 followed the same research design as Experiment 1, except that only live showup identifications were tested and, in addition, a physically dissimilar innocent suspect was shown to witnesses. The dissimilar innocent suspect was consistently and correctly rejected in the target-absent showup. Hit rates for live suspects were relatively low over the 24-h retention interval. Correct rejections significantly exceeded false identifications only on the immediate test. The lookalike innocent suspect was readily rejected when different clothing was worn at the test. No significant differences were found in hit scores or in confidence-accuracy scores between live and photographic targets. Confidence-accuracy correlations were significant but low across experimental conditions.