Knowledge of factors affecting eyewitness accuracy was examined in a sample of jurors, judges and law enforcement professionals. Participants completed a survey in which they were asked to agree or disagree with 30 statements about eyewitness issues, and their responses were compared to a sample of eyewitness experts who completed the same survey. Participant responses differed significantly from responses of eyewitness experts. Jurors disagreed with the experts on 87% of the issues, while judges and law enforcement disagreed with the experts on 60% of the issues. The findings show a large deficiency in knowledge of eyewitness memory amongst jurors, judges and law enforcement personnel, indicating that the legal system may benefit from expert assistance in the evaluation of eyewitness evidence. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Children from 5 to 12 years of age (N = 779) were shown a videotape where a preschool teacher has money stolen from her wallet. Children were shown a lineup, and for children in the bystander condition, the lineup contained a familiar bystander without the thief. Children in the control condition viewed the same lineup but they had not seen the bystander in the videotape. Among the 11-12-year olds, participants in the bystander condition were significantly more likely than control participants to misidentify the familiar bystander. This effect was not found in children from 5 to 10 years of age. When children in the control condition were shown a lineup that contained the thief without the bystander, the 11-12-year olds were significantly more likely than the younger children to correctly identify the thief. These findings demonstrate that age can both increase and decrease the accuracy of children's lineup identification accuracy depending on the task at hand and the content of a lineup.

Research has found support for a 'pop-out effect' that occurs when witnesses who accurately identify a criminal from a lineup are faster and uses more automatic processing than inaccurate witnesses who misidentify a foil. We present evidence that this finding may not occur with biased lineups. Witnesses to a mock theft were asked to make a lineup identification and three types of witnesses were compared: (1) accurate witnesses who identified a thief, (2) inaccurate witnesses who misidentified a foil who was more similar looking to the thief than the other lineup foils and (3) inaccurate witnesses who misidentified a foil who was not more similar in appearance to the thief than the other lineup foils. Accurate witnesses who identified the thief and inaccurate witnesses who misidentified a foil more similar to the thief than the other lineup foils were indistinguishable; both were faster, used more automatic recognition processes and were more confident than inaccurate witnesses who identified other foils.