Metacognitive Control and Lineup Instructions: Asking Eyewitnesses to Recollect Reduces False Identification
Avraham Levi*
Department of Israeli Police, Jerusalem, Israel
Submission: April 28, 2019; Published: May 15, 2019
*Corresponding author: Avraham Levi, Department of Israeli Police, Jerusalem, Israel
How to cite this article:Avraham Levi. Metacognitive Control and Lineup Instructions: Asking Eyewitnesses to Recollect Reduces False Identification. Psychol Behav Sci Int J. 2019; 11(5): 555822. DOI: 10.19080/PBSIJ.2019.11.555822
Abstract
This paper finds numerous failings in the methodology of the paper “Metacognitive control and lineup instructions: Asking eyewitnesses to recollect reduces false identification”, the most serious being the lack of ecological validity in the “eyewitness event”. This paper recommends the 48-person lineup as a far superior method of reducing false identification.
Guerin, Webber & Horry [1] have conducted four experiments that led them to the conclusion that asking to recollect reduces false identifications. This paper first of all discusses methodological issues which throws some doubt on this conclusion, and then discusses an alternative which is all events reduces false identifications much more.
Methodological Issues
The authors’ predictions assume that the fillers in a lineup are very similar to the target. They wisely chose fillers that fit the description of the targets they used, but unfortunately failed to tell us what description factors were used. Were these factors similar to those which real witnesses use, which tend to be few and quite general, or many and therefore much more specific? Their theory seems to be based on the latter. In all events it would seem that actual practice does not agree with the theory.
The authors have also used female targets and lineups, an unusual practice. This could be a confounding factor due to the wide variety of female hair styles and often the distinctiveness between them. The lack of detail in their characterization of the descriptions used is especially troubling. The authors have used a quite unusual small lineup of 4 members only. It would seem more helpful for at least minimal comparison to at least use the standard 6-person lineup.
The authors refer to the ability to distinguish the culprit from the innocent suspect and go so far as to designate an innocent suspect for each lineup. This does not completely make sense. Assuming fair lineups, there is no reason for the innocent suspect to stand out from the foils, and the actual task of the witness is not to distinguish the culprit from the innocent suspect, but in target-absent lineups to distinguish the target from all the lineup members to reach the correct conclusion that the target is absent. Thus, the more reliable indication of this ability with same-size lineups is the rate of rejection of the lineup.
All these issues pale, however, beside the “eyewitness event” that they used. First of all, by simply displaying photos of the targets they strayed considerably from ecological validity in which, at the minimum, the target is seen with other people in some short video, moving. Even more serious, as opposed to the video in which the learning of the target’s features is incidental (they do not know while viewing the video that they would be wise to concentrate on the target), the witnesses in the experiment knew perfectly well that their task was to remember the target.
An alternative Lineup
Levi [2-9] has experiments extensively with the 48-person lineup. With an average rate of mistaken choices of someone in target-absent lineups about 50%, the expected rate of mistaken identifications is 50/48 = 1%. This rate is quite superior to what Guerin et al. [1] are recommending.
References
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- Guerin N, Weber N, Horry R (preprint) Metacognitive control and lineup instructions: Asking eyewitnesses to recollect reduces false identification.
- Levi AM (2017) Comparing the English Video Lineup with the 48-Person Lineup. Universal Journal of Psychology 5: 239-243.
- Levi AM (2018) Can We increase identifications in 48-person lineups by asking for ratings of all lineup members? Psychology and Behavioral Science 8: 1-5.
- Levi AM (2018) The 48-person lineup. Scholarship Press.
- Levi AM (2019) Comparing 48-person lineups with a 96-person lineup. Scholarly Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences 2: 131-132.
- Levi AM (in press a) Comparing the 48-person lineup with the sequential lineup. Journal of Forensic and Crime Investigation
- Levi AM (in press b) Partial memory: Another reason for using large lineups? Legal and criminological psychology.
- Levi AM (2019) Why does the Simultaneous Lineup Produce Less Mistaken Identifications than the Showup? The 48-person Lineup. Forensic & Genetic Sciences.
- Levi AM, Menasheh D (2017) Evidence for the superiority of the 48-person lineup. Journal of Psychology and Cognition 2: 231-236.
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