The Mystery Man Can Help Reduce False Identification for Child Witnesses: Evidence from Video Line‐ups

Abstract

Summary: It is well established that children (as young as 5 years) can correctly identify a target from a target present (TP) line-up as accurately as adults; however, when shown a target absent (TA) line-up, children make more false identifications. In the present study, children aged 5-7 and 8-11 years viewed a film of a staged theft, then 1-2 days later were shown either a TP or TA video lineup. Half of the witnesses viewed line-ups that included a 'mystery man' (a black silhouette with a white question mark), which they could select if they did not recognise anyone from the line-up. When the 'mystery man' was present in the line-up, there were significantly fewer false identifications for the TA line-ups. This study shows that including a silhouette in a video line-up can help reduce false identifications for children as young as 5 years of age, without reducing correct identifications.

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.…”

“…In the control TA condition there were more false identifications for the designated target replacement, reflecting a relative strategy (picking the one who looked most like the target), whereas in the wildcard TA condition the fewer false identifications were more evenly distributed across the foils with less identifications of the designated target replacement, suggesting a guessing strategy. Havard and Memon (2013) investigated whether the benefit of using of a silhouette would transfer from a simultaneous photo lineup, to a video lineup. They presented children aged 5Á7 and 8Á11 with a video lineup, where each lineup member was presented serially, as a moving image, and for the Mystery Man condition children had to either say the number of the culprit, or if they did not see the culprit the number of the Mystery Man.…”

“…They presented children aged 5Á7 and 8Á11 with a video lineup, where each lineup member was presented serially, as a moving image, and for the Mystery Man condition children had to either say the number of the culprit, or if they did not see the culprit the number of the Mystery Man. Havard and Memon (2013) found that using the silhouette could help to increase the accuracy for TA lineups for both the older and younger children, from 41 percent to 60 percent. They suggested that, giving children the option to choose the silhouette in the lineup aligns the rejection decision more closely to the identification decision, and allows the witness to give in to the social demands to choose someone.…”

“…The studies by Zajac and Karageorge (2009), Zajac (2011) andMemon (2013), appear to show that using an additional lineup member (who is obviously not the target) can in some circumstances reduce false identifications from TA lineups, by allowing children to make a selection from the lineup without falsely identifying someone. Using the additional option of a silhouette in a lineup appears to be effective at reducing false identifications for both simultaneous photo lineups (Karageorge & Zajac, 2011;Zajac & Karageorge, 2009), and sequentially presented video lineups (Havard & Memon, 2013), without effecting accuracy for TP lineups.…”

“…Beresford and Blades (2006) found no differences in correct identifications for 6Á7 year olds and 9Á10 year olds. Havard, Memon, Clifford, and Gabbert (2010) found no differences in correct identifications for children aged 7Á9 years of age and adolescents aged 13Á15 years and Havard and Memon (2013) found no differences in correct identifications for children aged 5Á7 and 8Á11 years of age.…”