Eyewitness Accuracy When Making Multiple Identifications Using the Elimination Line-Up

Abstract

The accuracy of multiple identification decisions and their use as post-dictors of facial identification accuracy was explored using the elimination line-up procedure. Undergraduate students (N ¼ 55) viewed a videotaped staged theft. Participants then viewed three elimination line-ups: face, sweatshirt, and shoe, either target-present or -absent. Face identifications were central to all other accurate identifications. Clothing identification alone was not diagnostic of guilt. Correct identifications across two line-ups greatly increased the likelihood of guilt. Failure to make identifications across all three line-ups also was fairly diagnostic of innocence. Face identification plus one other correct decision increased likelihood of accuracy. ''Survival'' rates of the guilty sweatshirt and shoe were significantly higher than their identification rates.

Are children less reliable at making visual identifications than adults? A review

“…A number of techniques have been investigated by researchers in an attempt to reduce false identifications for child witnesses they include; sequential lineups Parker & Ryan, 1993;Pozzulo & Lindsay, 1998), elimination lineups (Humphries et al, 2012;Pozzulo & Balfour, 2006;Pozzulo, Dempsey, & Gascoigne, 2009;Pozzulo & Lindsay, 1999), practice lineups (Goodman, Bottoms, Schwarz-Kenney, & Rudy, 1991;Parker & Ryan, 1993), and providing an additional response (Beal et al, 1995;Davies, Tarrant, & Flin, 1989;Dunlevy & Cherryman, 2013;Havard & Memon, 2013;Karageorge & Zajac, 2011;Zajac & Karageorge, 2009). The various methods will now be described in more detail below.…”

Can Implicit Associations Distinguish True and False Eyewitness Memory? Development and Preliminary Testing of the IATe

“…Eyewitness identification errors have been framed in terms of perceptual similarity between the foil and target faces, often at a level of conscious featural matching wherein the witness compares line‐up faces with a memory of the perpetrator (“I think the thief is #2 because I remember he also had brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a receding hairline, and he didn't have the kind of haircut that #1 has and he was taller than #3.”). The so‐called elimination procedure pioneered by Pozzulo and her colleagues (e.g., Pozzulo, Dempsey, & Gascoigne, ) was developed to reduce the impact of these kinds of relative comparisons by asking eyewitnesses to engage in a series of judgments, beginning with picking the person who looks most similar to the perpetrator (relative judgment), and then eliminating the remaining faces before deciding whether the chosen face is that of the actual perpetrator (absolute judgment). During a simultaneous line‐up, witnesses may perform the relative judgments by consciously comparing the line‐up faces with their memory of the thief.…”