Dataset Information

The effect of pre-event instructions on eyewitness identification.

ABSTRACT: Research 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.

SUBMITTER: Baldassari MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9975131 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The effect of pre-event instructions on eyewitness identification.

Baldassari Mario J MJ Moore Kara N KN Hyman Ira E IE Hope Lorraine L Mah Eric Y EY Lindsay D Stephen DS Mansour Jamal J Saraiva Renan R Horry Ruth R Rath Hannah H Kelly Lauren L Jones Rosie R Vale Shannan S Lawson Bethany B Pedretti Josh J Palma Tomás A TA Cruz Francisco F Quarenta Joana J Van der Cruyssen Ine I Mileva Mila M Allen Jessica J Jeye Brittany B Wiechert Sera S

Cognitive research: principles and implications 20230228 1

Research 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 part ...[more]

PMID: 36854842

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Project description:BackgroundIn follow-up studies, the occurrence of the intermediate event may influence the risk of the outcome of interest. Existing methods estimate the effect of the intermediate event by including a time-varying covariate in the outcome model. However, the insusceptible fraction to the intermediate event in the study population has not been considered in the literature, leading to effect estimation bias due to the inaccurate dataset.MethodsIn this paper, we propose a new effect estimation method, in which the susceptible subpopulation is identified firstly so that the estimation could be conducted in the right population. Then, the effect is estimated via the extended Cox regression and landmark methods in the identified susceptible subpopulation. For susceptibility identification, patients with observed intermediate event time are classified as susceptible. Based on the mixture cure model fitted the incidence and time of the intermediate event, the susceptibility of the patient with censored intermediate event time is predicted by the residual intermediate event time imputation. The effect estimation performance of the new method was investigated in various scenarios via Monte-Carlo simulations with the performance of existing methods serving as the comparison. The application of the proposed method to mycosis fungoides data has been reported as an example.ResultsThe simulation results show that the estimation bias of the proposed method is smaller than that of the existing methods, especially in the case of a large insusceptible fraction. The results hold for small sample sizes. Besides, the estimation bias of the new method decreases with the increase of the covariates, especially continuous covariates, in the mixture cure model. The heterogeneity of the effect of covariates on the outcome in the insusceptible and susceptible subpopulation, as well as the landmark time, does not affect the estimation performance of the new method.ConclusionsBased on the pre-identification of the susceptible, the proposed new method could improve the effect estimation accuracy of the intermediate event on the outcome when there is an insusceptible fraction to the intermediate event in the study population.

Dataset Information

The effect of pre-event instructions on eyewitness identification.

Publications

The effect of pre-event instructions on eyewitness identification.

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