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The importance of decision bias for predicting eyewitness lineup choices: toward a Lineup Skills Test.

ABSTRACT: ?: We report on research on individual-difference measures that could be used to assess the validity of eyewitness identification decisions. BACKGROUND:The predictive utility of face recognition tasks for eyewitness identification has received some attention from psychologists, but the previous research focused primarily on witnesses' likelihood of correctly choosing the culprit when present in a lineup. Far less discussed has been individual differences in witnesses' proclivity to choose from a lineup that does not contain the culprit. We designed a two-alternative non-forced-choice face recognition task (consisting of mini-lineup test pairs, half old/new and half new/new) to predict witnesses' proclivity to choose for a set of culprit-absent lineups associated with earlier-viewed crime videos. RESULTS:In two studies involving a total of 402 participants, proclivity to choose on new/new pairs predicted mistaken identifications on culprit-absent lineups, with r values averaging .43. The likelihood of choosing correctly on old/new pairs (a measure of face recognition skill) was only weakly predictive of correct identifications in culprit-present lineups (mean r of .22). CONCLUSIONS:Our findings could be the basis for further research aimed at developing a standardized measure of proclivity to choose that could be used, along with other measures, to weigh eyewitnesses' lineup identification decisions.

SUBMITTER: Baldassari MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6352739 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The importance of decision bias for predicting eyewitness lineup choices: toward a Lineup Skills Test.

Baldassari Mario J MJ Kantner Justin J Lindsay D Stephen DS

Cognitive research: principles and implications 20190128 1

ᅟ: We report on research on individual-difference measures that could be used to assess the validity of eyewitness identification decisions.<h4>Background</h4>The predictive utility of face recognition tasks for eyewitness identification has received some attention from psychologists, but the previous research focused primarily on witnesses' likelihood of correctly choosing the culprit when present in a lineup. Far less discussed has been individual differences in witnesses' proclivity to choose ...[more]

PMID: 30693377

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Project description:Many decisions result from the accumulation of decision-relevant information (evidence) over time. Even when maximizing decision accuracy requires weighting all the evidence equally, decision-makers often give stronger weight to evidence occurring early or late in the evidence stream. Here, we show changes in such temporal biases within participants as a function of intermittent judgments about parts of the evidence stream. Human participants performed a decision task that required a continuous estimation of the mean evidence at the end of the stream. The evidence was either perceptual (noisy random dot motion) or symbolic (variable sequences of numbers). Participants also reported a categorical judgment of the preceding evidence half-way through the stream in one condition or executed an evidence-independent motor response in another condition. The relative impact of early versus late evidence on the final estimation flipped between these two conditions. In particular, participants' sensitivity to late evidence after the intermittent judgment, but not the simple motor response, was decreased. Both the intermittent response as well as the final estimation reports were accompanied by nonluminance-mediated increases of pupil diameter. These pupil dilations were bigger during intermittent judgments than simple motor responses and bigger during estimation when the late evidence was consistent than inconsistent with the initial judgment. In sum, decisions activate pupil-linked arousal systems and alter the temporal weighting of decision evidence. Our results are consistent with the idea that categorical choices in the face of uncertainty induce a change in the state of the neural circuits underlying decision-making.NEW & NOTEWORTHY The psychology and neuroscience of decision-making have extensively studied the accumulation of decision-relevant information toward a categorical choice. Much fewer studies have assessed the impact of a choice on the processing of subsequent information. Here, we show that intermittent choices during a protracted stream of input reduce the sensitivity to subsequent decision information and transiently boost arousal. Choices might trigger a state change in the neural machinery for decision-making.

Dataset Information

The importance of decision bias for predicting eyewitness lineup choices: toward a Lineup Skills Test.

Publications

The importance of decision bias for predicting eyewitness lineup choices: toward a Lineup Skills Test.

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