Angry Voices from the Past and Present: Effects on Adults' and Children's Earwitness Memory

Abstract

The major aim was to examine the effect of the perpetrator's tone of voice and time delay on voice recognition. In addition, the effect of two types of voice description interviews intended to strengthen voice encoding was tested. Both 11‐ to 13‐year‐olds (n = 160) and adults (n = 148) heard an unfamiliar voice for 40 s. The perpetrator either spoke in a normal tone at encoding and in the lineup (congruent), or in an angry tone at encoding and a normal tone in the lineup (incongruent). Witnesses were then interviewed about the voice with global questions or by rating voice characteristics. Half of the witnesses were presented with a lineup shortly after the interview (immediate) and the others after 2 weeks (delayed). Children tested immediately made significantly more correct identifications. This was not the case for adults. (In)congruency between tone of voice and interview type did not significantly affect voice recognition. Witnesses in the congruent–immediate condition performed the best. However, only 25% of the children and 19% of the adults made correct identifications. Poor identification accuracy and the fact that the majority of witnesses believed they would recognise the voice later are reasons for treating voice identification evidence with great caution. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evaluating Earwitness Identification Procedures: Adapting Pre-Parade Instructions and Parade Procedure

“…In keeping with previous voice identification literature, our results reveal overall low accuracy, high choosing rates, and particularly error-prone performance when the target is absent (Kerstholt et al, 2004;Öhman, Eriksson, & Granhag, 2011, 2013a, 2013bPhilippon, Cherryman, Bull, & Vrij, 2007;Smith et al, 2019). Voices differ from each other (betweenperson variability), and the same voice can sound very different across utterances (withinperson variability) (Lavan, Burton, Scott, & McGettigan, 2019).…”

Hearing Faces and Seeing Voices: The Integration and Interaction of Face and Voice Processing

“…However, both studies lack the data from a control condition in which the target spoke with a neutral tone at study and at test. More recent work by Ohman, Eriksson and Granhag (2013) provides this neutral baseline, and casts some doubt on previous results, revealing no effects of emotional change between study and lineup. Whilst, floor effects may have precluded any impact of emotion in this study, the fact that the emotional voice again did not facilitate subsequent recognition relative to the neutral base remains a surprise.…”

Voice parade procedures: optimising witness performance

“…Although the results of previous studies vary widely, hit rates tend to be low (< 50%) or at chance-level (e.g. Kerstholt, Jansen, Van Amelsvoort, & Broeders, 2004Ohman, Eriksson, & Granhag, 2011, 2013a, 2013bPerfect, Hunt, & Harris, 2002). If the participant does not select the target there are three other possible outcomes.…”