Developmental trends in lineup performance:Adolescents are more prone to innocent bystander misidentifications than children and adults

We tested developmental trends in eyewitness identification in biased and unbiased lineups. Our main interest was adolescent's lineup performance compared with children and adults. 7-10-year-olds, 11-13-year-olds, 14-16-year-olds, and adults (N = 431) watched a wallet-theft-video and subsequently identified the thief, victim, and witness from simultaneous target-present and target-absent six-person photo lineups. The thief-absent lineup included a bystander previously seen in thief proximity. Research on unconscious transference suggested a selection bias toward the bystander in adults and 11-13-year-olds, but not in younger children. Confirming our hypothesis, adolescents were more prone to bystander bias than all other age groups. This may be due to adolescents making more inferential errors than children, as predicted by fuzzy-trace theory and associative-activation theory, combined with lower inhibition control in adolescents compared with adults. We also replicated a clothing bias for all age groups and age-related performance differences in our unbiased lineups. Consistent with previous findings, participants were generally overconfident in their decisions, even though confidence was a better predictor of accuracy in older compared with younger participants. With this study, we show that adolescents have an increased tendency to misidentify an innocent bystander. Continued efforts are needed to disentangle how adolescents in comparison to other age groups perform in forensically relevant situations

Witnesses' failure to detect covert manipulations in their written statements

Law enforcement agencies and legal professionals often have to rely on witness statements. Undetected errors in witnesses' statements, however, could impede the accurate reconstruction of a crime and lead to the incrimination of innocent suspects. Here, we examined whether witnesses can detect manipulations in their written statements. We expect that writing a statement could provide a good means for discrimination between what is truly recalled and what is an error. This is because writing allows to monitor and control the previously produced information. In 3 experiments, participants watched a mock crime film and subsequently provided a written statement of what they had witnessed. Following a delay of several minutes (Experiment 1), 48hr (Experiment 2), or 1month (Experiment 3), participants were exposed to and interviewed about their testimony. Unknown to them, they were confronted with statements, which included 4 secretly manipulated details. Participants' missed a substantial number of manipulations in their written statements. Importantly, the detection rates varied as a function of delay (Experiments 1 and 2: 74-89%; Experiment 3: 36%-52%). Detection rates also varied as a function of the type of details that were manipulated. Our findings indicate that writing a statement comes with limited benefits in witnesses' ability to detect errors in their statements

Allegiance Bias in Statement Reliability Evaluations Is Not Eliminated by Falsification Instructions

Are expert witnesses biased by the side (defense vs. prosecution) that hires them? We examined this issue by having students act as expert witnesses in evaluating interviews in a child sexual abuse case (Experiment 1, N = 143) and tested the value of an instruction to counteract such allegiance effects. The intervention concerned an instruction to consider arguments both for and against the given hypothesis (i.e., two-sided instructions; Experiment 2, N = 139). In Experiment 3 (N = 123), we additionally provided participants with three different scenarios. Participants received a case file regarding a case of alleged sexual abuse. With the file, participants received an appointment letter emphasizing elements of the file that questioned (defense) or supported (prosecution) the veracity of the accusation. Participants displayed allegiance bias (Experiments 1–3), but two-sided instructions were not successful in eliminating allegiance bias (Experiments 2 and 3). The findings underscore the importance of legal safeguards in expert witness work

Does recognition imply guilt? An overview of the factors that influence eyewitness identification performance

Η αυτόπτης μαρτυρία αποτελεί ένα από τα βασικά στοιχεία για την απονομή δικαιοσύνης απαρχής του ποινικού συστήματος. Εντούτοις, όταν πρόκειται να αναγνωρίσουμε πρόσωπα, πολύ συχνά πέφτουμε σε λάθη. Δεν πρέπει να μας ξαφνιάζει λοιπόν το γεγονός ότι η αυτόπτης μαρτυρία καταδεικνύεται ως η πρωταρχική αιτία λανθασμένων καταδικαστικών αποφάσεων (www.innocenceproject.org). Επομένως, είναι ιδιαίτερα σημαντικό να κατανοήσουμε ποιοι λόγοι κάνουν την αυτόπτη μαρτυρία τόσο επιρρεπή σε σφάλματα και με ποιον τρόπο μπορούμε να ενισχύσουμε την αξιοπιστία της. Στο παρόν άρθρο παρουσιάζουμε μια ανασκόπηση των παραγόντων που επηρεάζουν την επίδοση της αναγνώρισης. Συγκεκριμένα θα αναφερθούμε στις μεταβλητές για τις οποίες υπάρχει συναίνεση στον ερευνητικό κόσμο. Σε αυτές περιλαμβάνονται αξιολογικές μεταβλητές, μεταβλητές συστήματος καθώς και μεταβλητές εκτίμησης, οι οποίες μπορούν να βοηθήσουν στην αξιολόγηση της ακρίβειας μιας απόφασης για αναγνώριση, μόλις αυτή επιτευχθεί. Εν προκειμένω, στόχος μας είναι να αναδείξουμε τις παραμέτρους οι οποίες στηρίζονται σε ισχυρή ερευνητική βάση, αλλά έχουν παρ’ όλα αυτά παραμεληθεί από το ελληνικό ποινικό σύστημα. Στηριζόμενοι σε εμπεριστατωμένη έρευνα, εισηγούμαστε μια σειρά μεταρρυθμίσεων και βελτιώσεων στις τρέχουσες διαδικασίες αναγνώρισης υπόπτων, οι οποίες μπορούν να βελτιώσουν την επίδοση των αυτοπτών μαρτύρων.Eyewitness identification stands as one of the core aspects of the judicial system. However, when it comes to identifying faces, people often make mistakes. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that eyewitness identification has been shown to be the number one factor of wrongful convictions (www.innoccenceproject.org). Therefore it is importantto understand the reasons that make eyewitnesses so error prone and investigate how we could enhance their performance. In the present article we examine the factors that have an impact on eyewitnessidentification performance. More specifically, we will refer to those variables over which the research community has reached consensus. These include estimator and system variables as well as postdictors,which are variables capable to diagnose the identification accuracy once it has taken place. In doing so we aim to reveal those parameters that are based on a sturdy research base, but have notwithstanding beenneglected by the Greek judicial system. We suggest a number of alterations and improvements, based on this research basis that can improve identification performance

Eyewitness identification procedures for multiple perpetrator crimes: a survey of police in Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands

A considerable proportion of crimes involve multiple perpetrators. Yet, little is known about how police officers construct, administer, and record eyewitness identification procedures for multiple suspects. An online survey of law enforcement agents in Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands (N = 51) was conducted to obtain an initial understanding of police perceptions of prevalence and characteristics of multiple perpetrator crimes, and to examine identification procedure practices given the little to no guidance provided for police. Practice converged when it came to the use of sequential, photographic lineups, but diverged between and within countries on whether or not suspects of multiple perpetrator crimes should be placed in separate lineups. Results specifically highlight contextual cuing as one critical area for future research in identification for multiple perpetrator crimes (i.e. placing multiple suspects in the same lineup or asking eyewitnesses to look for a specific suspect)

Face value: testing the utility of contextual face cues for face recognition

The presence of multiple faces during a crime may provide a naturally-occurring contextual cue to support eyewitness recognition for those faces later. Across two experiments, we sought to investigate mechanisms underlying previously-reported cued recognition effects, and to determine whether such effects extended to encoding conditions involving more than two faces. Participants studied sets of individual faces, pairs of faces, or groups of four faces. At test, participants in the single-face condition were tested only on those individual faces without cues. Participants in the two and four-face conditions were tested using no cues, correct cues (a face previously studied with the target test face), or incorrect cues (a never-before-seen face). In Experiment 2, associative encoding was promoted by a rating task. Neither hit rates nor false-alarm rates were significantly affected by cue type or face encoding condition in Experiment 1, but cuing of any kind (correct or incorrect) in Experiment 2 appeared to provide a protective buffer to reduce false-alarm rates through a less liberal response bias. Results provide some evidence that cued recognition techniques could be useful to reduce false recognition, but only when associative encoding is strong

The effects of stress on eyewitness memory: a survey of memory experts and laypeople

This survey examined lay and expert beliefs about statements concerning stress effects on (eyewitness) memory. Thirty-seven eyewitness memory experts, 36 fundamental memory experts, and 109 laypeople endorsed, opposed, or selected don’t know responses for a range of statements relating to the effects of stress at encoding and retrieval. We examined proportions in each group and differences between groups (eyewitness memory experts vs. fundamental memory experts; experts vs. laypeople) for endorsements (agree vs. disagree) and selections (don’t know vs. agree/disagree). High proportions of experts from both research fields agreed that very high levels of stress impair the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. A majority of fundamental experts, but not eyewitness experts, endorsed the idea that stress experienced during encoding can enhance memory. Responses to statements regarding moderating factors such as stressor severity and detail type provided further insight into this discrepancy. Eyewitness memory experts more frequently selected the don’t know option for neuroscientific statements regarding stress effects on memory than fundamental memory experts, although don’t know selections were substantial among both expert groups. Laypeople’s responses to eight of the statements differed statistically from expert answers on topics such as memory in children, in professionals such as police officers, for faces and short crimes, and the existence of repression, providing insight into possible ‘commonsense’ beliefs on stress effects on memory. Our findings capture the current state of knowledge about stress effects on memory as reflected by sample of experts and laypeople, and highlight areas where further research and consensus would be valuabl