Not Just Faces: Forensic Object Identification Procedures
Although police departments regularly administer identification procedures for forensic objects (such as vehicles and weapons), these procedures remain largely under-researched. My work aims to remedy the gap in this literature.
Predicting and postdicting eyewitness identification accuracy on forensic-object lineups
In the only previously-published study examining identification accuracy for getaway vehicles, discriminability was poor (Smith, Mackovichova et al., 2020). We examined whether this poor discriminability might have been attributable to witnesses allocating their attention to other aspects of the crime, as well as witnesses’ capacity to forecast their discriminability. Participants who were instructed to attend to the getaway vehicle displayed better discriminability than did participants who were instructed to attend to the video (control) or culprit (Experiment 1). In more ecologically-valid experiments, witnesses were able to forecast their vehicle-identification discriminability (Experiments 2a and 2b). Both self-appraised focus on the getaway vehicle and pre-identification confidence forecasted discriminability. Witnesses with weak memories know their memories are weak and can communicate this information. Investigators might use self-appraisals to determine which witnesses should see vehicle lineups. Finally, post-identification confidence was an excellent indicator of vehicle-identification accuracy and should be used to assess reliability.
Ayala, N.T. & Smith, A.M. (In Press) Predicting and postdicting eyewitness identification accuracy on forensic-object lineups. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition
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