Forensic psychology/ Pozzulo

xvii, 446 p.: ill.; 23 cm

Forensic psychology/ Pozzulo

xvii, 446 p.: ill.; 23 cm

Person description and identification by child witnesses

When children witness crime, they may be asked to describe and identify the persons involved in the event. The information provided by the child witnesses may be used to narrow the search for the suspect and eventually to select foils for the lineup identification task (Luus & Wells 1991). Foils are innocent people placed in the lineup as distractors. Children’s abilities to describe and identify persons are reviewed in this chapter and are contrasted with comparable abilities of adults

Does speed indicate lineup identification accuracy? Examining children's and adults' reaction time

The purpose of this study was to assess young children's lineup identification performance compared to adults and to determine whether developmental variability exists in reaction time when making correct and incorrect identification decisions across target-present and target-absent lineups. Adults (Mage = 20.00) and young children (Mage= 4.69) were exposed to an unfamiliar target and the time taken for them to make a lineup decision was automatically recorded by touching the picture on a computer screen. Children were found to have fewer hits (i.e., correct identifications and rejections) and more false alarms than adults in both lineup types. In addition, results support the hypothesis that a faster decision was related to improved accuracy for adults, while a slower decision may be suggestive of reduced accuracy for children. The developmental variability may suggest that developmental cognitive factors may influence lineup behavior. Implications of the findings and recommendation for future research are discussed. Copyright 2014 American Journal of Forensic Psychology

Comparing Younger and Older Adult Eyewitnesses: Examining the Simultaneous, Elimination, and Wildcard Lineup Procedures

Older adults (60- to 99-year-olds) and younger adults (18- to 49-year-olds) viewed a videotaped theft and were then asked to provide a description of the perpetrator. Following a brief delay, participants were presented with a simultaneous, elimination, or wildcard lineup procedure that was either target-present or target-absent. Overall, younger adult eyewitnesses were more likely to be correct in their identification decisions, reported more perpetrator descriptors, and had a higher proportion of accurate descriptors compared to older adults. Moreover, the simultaneous and elimination procedures were superior to the wildcard procedure in target-absent lineups. When presented with a target-present lineup, participants were more likely to be correct when presented with the simultaneous procedure compared to the elimination procedure. Neither of the identification procedures that have been shown to be beneficial with child eyewitnesses appear to have influenced the rate of correct identification or correct rejection for older adults as a separate age group

Could Target Age Explain Identification Accuracy Differences Between Child and Adult Eyewitnesses?

Previous research indicates that the age of the witness making an identification affects accuracy. Few studies, however, have examined the effect of the culprit's age on identification accuracy. The present study examined accuracy rates of adult witnesses for a child or adult target. Correct identification rates were higher for the child compared to the adult target, but correct rejection rates were higher for the adult compared to the child target. With regard to choosing behaviour, witnesses were more likely to select a line-up member than reject the line-up when presented with the child compared to the adult target. These results suggest that differences in accuracy between witnesses may be inherent to the age of the target being identified rather than the witness' memory for the target