Policy regarding the sequential lineup is not informed by probative value but is informed by ROC analysis.

It is important to determine if switching from simultaneous to sequential lineups affects response bias (the inclination to make an identification from a lineup), discriminability (the ability to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects), or both. Measures of probative value cannot provide such information; receiver operating characteristic analysis can. Recent receiver operating characteristic analyses indicate that switching to sequential lineups both induces more conservative responding and makes it more difficult to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects. If more conservative responding is preferred (i.e., if policymakers judge that the harm associated with the reduction of correct identifications is exceeded by the benefit associated with the reduction in false identifications), recent data indicate that this result can be achieved without a loss of discriminability by using the simultaneous lineup procedure in conjunction with a more conservative decision criterion.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

In the DNA Exoneration Cases, Eyewitness Memory was Not the Problem:A reply to Berkowitz and Frenda (2018) and Wade, Nash and Lindsay (2018)

The available real-world evidence suggests that, on an initial test, eyewitness memory is often reliable. Ironically, even the DNA exoneration cases—which generally involved nonpristine testing conditions and which are usually construed as an indictment of eyewitness memory—show how reliable an initial test of eyewitness memory can be in the real world. We endorse the use of pristine testing procedures, but their absence does not automatically imply that eyewitness memory is unreliable. </jats:p

The role of estimator variables in eyewitness identification

This article was published Online First February 1, 2018Estimator 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 while 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.Carolyn Semmler, John Dunn, Laura Mickes, John T. Wixte

Regaining Consensus on the Reliability of Memory

In the last 20 years, the consensus about memory being essentially reliable has been neglected in favor of an emphasis on the malleability and unreliability of memory and on the public’s supposed unawareness of this. Three claims in particular have underpinned this popular perspective: that the confidence people have in their memory is weakly related to its accuracy, that false memories of fictitious childhood events can be easily implanted, and that the public wrongly sees memory as being like a video camera. New research has clarified that all three claims rest on shaky foundations, suggesting there is no reason to abandon the old consensus about memory being malleable but essentially reliable