The effect of pre‑event instructions on eyewitness identification

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dc.contributor.authorBaldassari, Mario J.
dc.contributor.authorMoore, Kara N.
dc.contributor.authorHyman, Ira E. Jr
dc.contributor.authorHope, Lorraine
dc.contributor.authorMah, Eric Y.
dc.contributor.authorLindsay, D. Stephen
dc.contributor.authorMansour, Jamal
dc.contributor.authorSaraiva, Renan
dc.contributor.authorHorry, Ruth
dc.contributor.authorRath, Hannah
dc.contributor.authorKelly, Lauren
dc.contributor.authorJones, Rosie
dc.contributor.authorVale, Shannon
dc.contributor.authorLawson, Bethany
dc.contributor.authorPedretti, Josh
dc.contributor.authorPalma, Tomás A.
dc.contributor.authorCruz, Francisco
dc.contributor.authorQuarenta, Joana
dc.contributor.authorVan der Cruyssen, Ine
dc.contributor.authorMileva, Mila
dc.contributor.authoret al.
dc.date.accessioned2024-01-16T21:28:45Z
dc.date.available2024-01-16T21:28:45Z
dc.date.copyright2023en_US
dc.date.issued2023
dc.descriptionThanks to Sydney Long, Jordyn Pope, Emily Walden, Alonna Rios, Audrie Cabrera, and Nikai Hinojosa for their work on coding all of those eyewitness identification papers! Thanks to Annelise Vredeveldt and Hayley Cullen for their contributions to the initial conversation that inspired this work. Thank you to Melissa Colloff, Ryan Fitzgerald, and Andrew Smith for their analytical advice and resources.en_US
dc.description.abstractResearch on eyewitness identification often involves exposing participants to a simulated crime and later testing memory using a lineup. We conducted a systematic review showing that pre-event instructions, instructions given before event exposure, are rarely reported and those that are reported vary in the extent to which they warn participants about the nature of the event or tasks. At odds with the experience of actual witnesses, some studies use pre-event instructions explicitly warning participants of the upcoming crime and lineup task. Both the basic and applied literature provide reason to believe that pre-event instructions may affect eyewitness identification performance. In the current experiment, we tested the impact of pre-event instructions on lineup identification decisions and confidence. Participants received non-specific pre-event instructions (i.e., “watch this video”) or eyewitness pre-event instructions (i.e., “watch this crime video, you’ll complete a lineup later”) and completed a culprit-absent or -present lineup. We found no support for the hypothesis that participants who receive eyewitness pre-event instructions have higher discriminability than participants who receive non-specific pre-event instructions. Additionally, confidence-accuracy calibration was not significantly different between conditions. However, participants in the eyewitness condition were more likely to see the event as a crime and to make an identification than participants in the non-specific condition. Implications for conducting and interpreting eyewitness identification research and the basic research on instructions and attention are discussed.en_US
dc.description.reviewstatusRevieweden_US
dc.description.scholarlevelFacultyen_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThe first author (KNM) received one month of summer salary funding from Oklahoma State University’s College of Arts and Sciences ASR program in part to work on this project. Some pilot data collection was funded by a NSERC grant to DSL.en_US
dc.identifier.citationBaldassari, M. J., Moore, K. N., Hyman, I. E., Hope, L., Mah, E. Y., Lindsay, D. S., ... Wiechert, S. (2023). The effect of pre-event instructions on eyewitness identification. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 8(16), https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-023-00471-4en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-023-00471-4
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/15820
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherCognitive Research: Principles and Implicationsen_US
dc.subjectEyewitness identificationen_US
dc.subjectLineupen_US
dc.subjectStudy instructionsen_US
dc.subjectEyewitness memoryen_US
dc.titleThe effect of pre‑event instructions on eyewitness identificationen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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