Individual differences in eyewitness accuracy across multiple lineups of faces.

ABSTRACT: Theories of face recognition in cognitive psychology stipulate that the hallmark of accurate identification is the ability to recognize a person consistently, across different encounters. In this study, we apply this reasoning to eyewitness identification by assessing the recognition of the same target person repeatedly, over six successive lineups. Such repeat identifications are challenging and can be performed only by a proportion of individuals, both when a target exhibits limited and more substantial variability in appearance across lineups (Experiments 1 and 2). The ability to do so correlates with individual differences in identification accuracy on two established tests of unfamiliar face recognition (Experiment 3). This indicates that most observers have limited facial representat

SUBMITTER: Russ AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6091462 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature