A Repeated Forced‐choice Line‐up Procedure Provides Suspect Bias Information with No Cost to Accuracy for Older Children and Adults |
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| Authors: | Kaila C Bruer Heather L Price |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Psychology, University of Regina, Regina, Canada;2. Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada |
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| Abstract: | In two experiments and one follow‐up analysis, we examined the impact of using a repeated forced‐choice (RFC) line‐up procedure with child and adult eyewitnesses. The RFC procedure divides the identification task into a series of exhaustive binary comparisons that produces not only traditional line‐up information (identification decision and confidence) but also information about witness' selection behavior. Experiment 1 revealed that younger children (6‐ to 8‐year‐olds) struggled with the RFC procedure, while older children (9‐ to 11‐year‐olds) performed as well with the RFC procedure as with a simultaneous procedure (with wildcard). Experiment 2 replicated this comparable performance with adults. Witnesses' suspect selection behavior during the RFC was predictive of identification accuracy for older children and adults. A model examined the additional information provided by the RFC in experiments 1 and 2 and provided evidence that witnesses' patterns of responding can be used to estimate suspect selection bias (a proxy for suspect recognition strength) associated with individual line‐up decisions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
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