The Psychology of Lineup Identifications1

A review is made of issues and data on eyewitness identifications, and a relative-judgment conceptualization is proposed. It is argued that eyewitnesses are prone to choose the lineup member who most resembles the perpetrator relative to other lineup members as evidenced by studies that manipulated similarity of lineup members. The relative-judgment strategy is fallacious because of the unpredictable occurrence of target-absent lineups and is not corrected fully by instructions to eyewitnesses. An extension of the relative-judgment conceptualization proposes an inverse relationship between the goodness of witnesses' memories (quality and quantity of relevant information available in memory) and witnesses' tendencies to rely on relative judgments. This extended conceptualization was used to derive expectations regarding an experiment (N= 192 eyewitnesses) that used a blank lineup prior to presenting eyewitnesses with the actual lineup. The data indicated that a blank lineup can yield a diagnostic split of eyewitnesses; those who made no identification when presented with a blank lineup were less likely to make false identifications on the actual lineup than either the witnesses who identified someone from the blank lineup or the witnesses who were not presented with a blank lineup. The blank lineup did not produce a significant loss in accurate identifications. The practical implications of using blank lineups and the theoretical utility of the relative-judgment conceptualization are discussed.     

Memory for faces: Encoding and retrieval operations

The reliable finding that trait judgments of faces yield better recognition memory than do feature judgments of faces is conceptualized as an encoding-specificity effect. Specifically, both trait-judgment encodings of faces and face-recognition tests are argued to be holistic, involving topographical information with between-feature processing. Consistent with the concept that encoding and retrieval operations interact to produce retrieval success, it was expected that a memory-for-face test using the Identi-kit (which requires reconstructions of the face at a feature level of analysis) would show trait-encoding tasks to be inferior to feature-encoding tasks. Eighty subjects were assigned randomly to judge a face on 10 trait dimensions (e.g., honesty-dishonesty) or on 10 feature dimensions (e.g., narrow nose-wide nose) and subsequently attempted to recognize the target among five distractors or to reconstruct the face from an Identi-kit. The significant interaction between encoding and retrieval operations indicated that the face was best identified under trait-encoding conditions but best reconstructed under feature-encoding conditions. The match between trait encoding and recognition in yielding high memory performance suggests strongly that trait judgments foster holistic processing of faces (i.e., interfeature topographical information is p-art of the context) and that the recognition of faces also is holistic. Finally, the utility of the feature- vs. holistic-processing distinction is questioned, and an alternative is proposed.     

Experimental psychology and the courtroom

Experimental social and cognitive psychology cover a range of topics such as attitudes, attribution, decision making, perception, memory, comprehension, and reasoning. The relevance of these topics to the law is apparent in such domains as jury selection, jury behavior, plea bargaining, eyewitness testimony, sentencing, and police investigation strategies. Despite early attempts to apply experimental psychology to law (circa 1900–1920), it was not until the mid 1970s that a robust law-relevant literature in experimental psychology began to unfold. The experimental psychology/law interface continues to experience some problems in (1) generalizing from specific research experiments to real-world conditions, and (2) identifying solutions rather than just problems.     

The death of discipline: is the requiem premature?

There is a current trend among one sector of the professional mental-health community against the use of confrontive discipline with children and toward a positive-only approach to child behavior management. The current paper addresses this position by providing an overview of family process research as well as parent training outcome research related to parent disciplinary (punishment) practices. Consistent with research from developmental psychology showing that “authoritative” parenting is associated with the best developmental outcomes, this overview concludes that child management which combines positive approaches with age appropriate structures, limits, and non-hostile, nonviolent punishment is associated with the best treatment outcomes. The paper challenges positions calling for an end to the use of punishment with children.     

Effect of a reliability observer on the frequency of positive parent behavior recorded during naturalistic parent-child interactions

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of the presence of a reliability observer on the number of positive parent behaviors recorded by a primary observer during naturalistic parent-child interactions. Thirty parents and their young clinic-referred children served as subjects. After two initial home observations, a reliability observer was present to record data in observation session 3, but not session 4, for one-half the subjects. For the remaining subjects the reliability observer was present in session 4 but not session 3. The results of a 2 × 2 analysis of variance indicated a group by session interaction which resulted from an increase in maternal attention to the child in the presence of a reliability observer. Hypotheses to explain the finding are presented and implications of the results are discussed.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant MH28859-01.     

Does Knowledge that a Crime Was Staged Affect Eyewitness Performance?1

The Staged crime has generally been considered a valid paradigm for assessing eyewitness identification accuracy. Yet the typical procedure informs the witness before the lineup task that the event was staged. The current study manipulated whether or not witnesses were informed that the witnessed crime was staged (information variable). Two other variables, the presence or absence of the perpetrator in the photo-lineup and the physical similarity of lineup members, were manipulated to asses any possible interactions with the information variable. A theft was staged individually for 184 unsuspecting witnesses who were then randomly assigned to be either informed that the theft was staged or not informed. Next, all witnesses were met by a uniformed security officer who showed them a photo-lineup of six individuals. Half of the witnesses viewed a perpetrator-present lineup with either high or low physical similarity between the foils and the perpatrator and half viewed a perpetrator-absent lineup with either high or low physical similarity. Three confidence measures, one cooperation measure, and an Embedded Figures Test score were obtained. The results showed that (a) the information variable did not affect the likelihood that a witness would attempt an identification; (b) the information variable did not have a main effect on the particular choices made by the witnesses nor did it interact with lineup similarity, but it did interact with the presence-absence variable; and (c) the information variable did not affect witness confidence either as a main effect or interaction effect, but, was relatively consistent in affecting the correlation between confidence and accuracy such that the correlation was lower for witnesses who were not informed. The interaction between the information variable and the presence-absence variable on accuracy was due to the uninformed witnesses being less accurate than the informcd witnesses in the perpetrator-present condition. The results suggest that accuracy among actual eyewitnesses may be lower than obtained in the typical staged crime procedure and that accuracy-confidence correlations may be overestimated by the typical staged crime.     

EFFECTS OF A PROCEDURE DERIVED FROM THE OVERCORRECTION PRINCIPLE ON MANIPULATED AND NONMANIPULATED BEHAVIORS

Positive practice overcorrection has been shown to be effective in reducing stereotypic self-stimulatory behaviors displayed by retarded and autistic individuals. In addition, the procedure also may increase the occurrence of appropriate behavior through intensive practice. In the present study, several stereotypic and one appropriate behavior (appropriate toy play) displayed by two autistic children were measured before and during treatment by a positive practice in appropriate toy play overcorrection procedure. Overcorrection was introduced for each of the targeted inappropriate behaviors in succession for both children. Results showed that overcorrection reduced all stereotypic behaviors displayed by both children. In addition, one subject displayed marked increases in the behavior practised during overcorrection, appropriate toy play, relative to its baseline rate of occurrence. The results indicate that for some individuals, overcorrection may be effective in teaching and motivating appropriate forms of behavior as well as in reducing stereotypy.     

Behavioral treatment of obsessive-compulsive neurosis

Three chronic and severe obsessive-compulsive neurotics were treated with behavioral intervention strategies and psychotropic medication. The effects of treatment were evaluated in three separate experiments with single case experimental designs. The results suggest that response prevention was effective in reducing ritualistic behavior while the effects of flooding and antidepressant medication added little to outcome. The results also suggest that strategies aimed only at reducing compulsive behavior per se are insufficient in eliminating other associated difficulties (e.g., depressive symptoms, interpersonal problems) and that a comprehensive approach to treatment is needed.     

Effect of sentence structure on stuttering

The elicited speech of 20 adult male stutterers was analyzed to determine the effect of the number, type, and location of relative clause structures on the frequency of stuttering. The selected structures were identified on the basis of transformational grammar. The findings indicate that the frequency of stuttering increases significantly with an increase in the number of relative clauses included in a matrix sentence structure. The results also indicate that the more severe the stuttering is, the more the stutterer is likely to be affected by this variable. Trends toward more frequent stuttering in the postverbal relative clause and the adjectival form of the relative clause were observed.