Children's identification of unfamiliar voices on both target-present and target-absent lineups

Abstract

A robust finding from the eyewitness literature is that children are as accurate as adults on target-present lineups from the age of five years, whereas they continue to make an erroneous false positive identification from a target-absent lineup up until fourteen years (Pozzulo & Lindsay, 1998). The current study explores whether the same pattern occurs when voices are used instead of faces and evaluates the reliability of children as potential earwitnesses. A total of 334 participants from six age groups (6-7-year-olds, 8-9-yearolds, 10-11-year-olds, 12-13-year-olds, 14-15-year-olds and adults) listened to a 30 second audio clip of an unfamiliar voice and were then presented with either a six person target-present or target-absent voice lineup. Overall, participants were more accurate with target-present than target-absent lineups. Performance on target-present lineups showed adult-like levels of attainment by 8-9 years of age. In contrast, performance on targetabsent lineups was extremely poor and remained poor through to adulthood with all age groups tending to make a false identification. Confidence was higher when participants made correct than incorrect decisions for both types of lineup and this did not change with increasing age. Given these results, both child and adult earwitness evidence needs to be treated with considerable caution.

Time to reflect on voice parades: The influence of reflection and retention interval duration on earwitness performance

“…Overall accuracy was low, but consistent with previous research using similar parade designs and stimuli (e.g., Pautz et al, 2023;Smith et al, 2020). Also corresponding with previous outcomes was the finding that listeners were significantly more likely to be accurate when undertaking a parade where the target was present than when the target was absent (Calderwood et al, 2019;Smith et al, 2020).…”

“…Overall accuracy was low, but consistent with previous research using similar parade designs and stimuli (e.g., Pautz et al, 2023; Smith et al, 2020). Also corresponding with previous outcomes was the finding that listeners were significantly more likely to be accurate when undertaking a parade where the target was present than when the target was absent (Calderwood et al, 2019; Smith et al, 2020). We found that there were no meaningful differences in overall accuracy between listeners who were exposed to the post‐encoding reflection period compared to the control condition; nor was there a meaningful interaction between target presence and reflection.…”

“…As in Experiment 1, the results of Experiment 2 show low accuracy and no meaningful differences in accuracy between the reflection and control condition, nor was there any interaction between target presence and reflection. Surprisingly, there was no statistically meaningful evidence that accuracy was higher following target‐present parades than target‐absent parades (see Calderwood et al, 2019; Pautz et al, 2023; Smith et al, 2020). The illustration of the cell means suggests that this non‐effect is due to a reduction in accuracy following a longer retention interval for parades where the target is present, rather than an increase in accuracy for parades where the target is absent.…”

Time to reflect on voice parades: The influence of reflection and retention interval duration on earwitness performance.

“…As in Experiment 1, the results of Experiment 2 show low accuracy and no meaningful differences in accuracy between the reflection and control condition, nor was there any interaction between target presence and reflection. Surprisingly, there was no statistically meaningful evidence that accuracy was higher following target-present parades than target-absent parades (see Calderwood et al, 2019;Pautz et al, 2023;Smith et al, 2020). The illustration of the cell means suggests that this non-effect is due to a reduction in accuracy following a longer retention interval for parades where the target is present, rather than an increase in accuracy for parades where the target is absent.…”

Identifying unfamiliar voices: the influence of sample duration and parade size.

“…We hypothesised that the six-voice parade would facilitate detection of the signal (i.e., the target voice) due to reduced interference and auditory attentional demands (e.g., Zimmerman et al, 2016). Although both six-voice (Calderwood et al, 2019;Kerstholt et al, 2004;Öhman et al, 2013b) and nine-voice (Smith et al, 2020; voice parades have been used before in experimental settings, no studies have directly compared between-subject performance (Bull and Clifford, 1984, did compare voice parades of different sizes, but used a within-subjects design).…”