If the suspect is innocent, then the lineup is a target-absent lineup, and choosing the suspect is a false alarm, while rejecting the lineup is a correct rejection.
If the suspect is guilty, then the lineup is a target-present lineup, and choosing the suspect is a hit, while rejecting the lineup is a miss. In experiments, the researchers do indeed know when a suspect is guilty (i.e., was previously shown to subjects). In real-world lineups, police do not know when a suspect is guilty. This real-world procedure is both similar to and different from basic laboratory experiments on recognition memory, so it is worth clarifying a few points. The eyewitness can either choose one of the lineup members or decline to choose anyone (i.e., they can “reject the lineup”). An eyewitness who saw the crime is shown a lineup, which typically consists of a set of photographs with one photograph of the suspect and five or more photographs of physically similar “fillers” who are “known innocents” and not suspected of the crime (Police Executive Research Forum, 2013, Fig. Importantly, the suspect may or may not actually be the one who committed the crime.
Lineups are used for eyewitness identification purposes when the police establish a suspect during the course of a criminal investigation. Guilty suspects have been correctly convicted based on true eyewitness identifications, but innocent suspects have also been wrongly convicted based on false eyewitness identifications (Buckhout, 1974 Garrett, 2011 see also The Innocence Project and the National Registry of Exonerations, Gross & Shaffer, 2012). Few recognition memory tasks have consequences that are as important as a police lineup. ROC analyses showed that the simultaneous test format generally yielded superior discriminability performance compared to the sequential test format, whether or not the critical lure was present in the lineup.Įxperimental psychologists have long been concerned about the reliability of eyewitness memory (e.g., Clifford & Bull, 1978 Munsterberg, 1908), especially with regard to the identification of a suspect in a lineup. A studied word (e.g., tired) served as the guilty suspect in target-present lineups, unstudied related words (e.g., nap) served as fillers in target-present and target-absent lineups, and critical lures (e.g., sleep) were included in some target-present and target-absent lineups as well, to serve as attractive alternatives to the target word (or suspect). ) and were tested using “lineups” in which six words were presented either simultaneously or sequentially. In two experiments, subjects studied DRM (Deese-Roediger-McDermott) word lists (e.g., bed, rest, tired. However, there is no reason why theories of simultaneous versus sequential lineup performance cannot be tested using more traditional recognition memory tasks. In standard eyewitness identification experiments, subjects view a mock-crime video and then are tested only once, requiring large samples for adequate power. Recent research in the eyewitness identification literature has investigated whether simultaneous or sequential lineups yield better discriminability.
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